In Europe

bombardment.”
    ‘Stalin could easily have had the city evacuated. But he didn't. The only route out of the city was by car, along what we called “The Life Road”, across the ice of Lake Ladoga. A friend of ours was taken out of the city on that route when he was a young boy. The Germans fired on the convoys the whole time. But all he remembers is a glorious day, the sun was shining, and all around him the water sprayed up in cheerful fountains. You can imagine the kind of work those drivers did. They kept the city alive. In my memory, that gap in the siege was the start of the victory.
    ‘We performed at the front every day. Beneath those flimsy stage costumes we always felt like we were freezing to death. The show would start with the victory song. That was very popular then. In fact, the song itself dated from the time of the czars, but the composer had been sent to Siberia so the Soviets could claim it for themselves. After that came a couple of other songs, a sketch about a stupid German, I gave a rousing speech, another girl danced, and that was it.
    ‘The soldiers were crazy about us. For a moment, they were seeing something from the normal world, even though we lived in the same frozen trenches, under the same bombardments, with the same canisters under our head for a pillow. When we were in the city we went to plays and concerts to keep up our feeling of normalcy and self-respect. Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony had its premiere in Leningrad on 9 August, 1942, and it was dedicated to the suffering city. That was a remarkable event, none of us will ever forget it. Listen to that music again, and imagine how we listened to it, with our skinny bodies, in our tattered rags, we all stood there weeping. At the close we heard our artillery pounding along with the music. They had to keep the Nazis from shelling the concert hall.
    ‘People were really fantastic in those times. The Muscovites did all they could to escape, but the people of Leningrad were much more loyal. They stayed put. They planted cabbages and potatoes in the parade grounds and in the Summer Gardens, and made little kitchen plots wherever they could. While they waited impatiently for their beans and lettuces to come up, they ate leaves and grass, just to have some greens.
    ‘In early 1943 we heard about the liberation of Stalingrad. We were at the front, an officer came in with the news, it was just before a performance. We knew about the battle going on there, we were very nervous about it. Then came that report, and you should have heard the tumult it caused! All those worn-out soldiers at the front began cheering and singing, throwing their caps in the air, they almost blew the roof off the recreation hall!
    ‘After that, everything became easier to bear. There was more food, more hope. I fell in love with a naval officer. But still, it went on for another year. It was only on 27 January, 1944, after 900 days, that the siege was broken and the first regular Russian soldiers appeared in ourstreets. Every year on that day, friends and family still call to congratulate each other. About 650,000 people, a third of the city's population, didn't survive the siege.’
    ‘In May 1945 I was happy as a lark. Spring had come, I was just married, I was expecting a baby.
    ‘My life didn't change much after that. I remember the period of transition between Stalin and Khrushchev as a difficult, scary time. In late 1953, Beria, the big boss of the intelligence service, was suddenly executed, supposedly for being a British spy. When that happened everyone began realising that real changes were on their way.
    ‘After that, the Khrushchev era was quite pleasant. We were young, we were able to see Western films, the papers became more interesting. And after that this country simply became a huge mess. Gorbachev was a good man, but I think I'm the only one who would still say that these days. Today things are completely terrible. Everyone's a thief. The whole country has been milked dry. As a veteran, I always had a good pension. And I only had to pay half the rent for my flat. But it's become harder to make ends meet now, even for me.
    ‘I'm still in touch with a few of those student volunteers from back then. After the war we had a kind of club: drinking, poetry, lovers, marriages, prams. When you saw them later, it was impossible to imagine how these respectable artists and intellectuals had ever survived the front. But still, they did, they even