In an extensive interview with Sobaka.ru, Nikita Lomagin, EUSP professor of history, a 2025 laureate of the TOP 50. Best Known People of St. Petersburg award, revealed myths about the blockade, spoke about the creation of the Institute of the History of the Defense and Blockade of Leningrad, the future of the blockade museum and the prospects for the development of the European University.
Here is the full text of the interview:
— What is your personal, family history of the blockade? Why did you start working on this topic?
I come from a family of siege survivors. My mother survived the siege as a girl. My grandmother worked at the Baltic Shipyard and managed to survive the first siege winter with her three children before being evacuated. My grandfather volunteered in September 1941 and went missing in November. The siege is part of my family memory. But that was not the reason I started studying its history. When I entered graduate school at Leningrad State University, I chose the topic of the fight against German propaganda: it was related to my specialty in the military department. In the 1990s, when archives began to open in the country, I returned to this topic. And this led to the fact that in 2005 I defended my doctoral dissertation, which was devoted to political control during the Battle of Leningrad. After that, I became interested in the socio-economic problems of the siege, I tried to answer some questions for myself. For example, why were no significant food reserves created? Was this a problem of the city or a problem of the state planning system as a whole?
— Did you manage to answer the questions?
The Gosplan system was based on the principle that resources should be used, they should not be stored. The country had an institution of state reserves, but these reserves were enough to hold out for three months in the conditions of the war that had begun. And in the course of three months we were supposed to have solves the problem by military means and already beaten the enemy on foreign territory.
— So, according to the State Planning Committee, the cities were stockpiling supplies for a maximum of three months?
That was the approach. And the quantity of reserves is also connected with the availability of warehouses: there were few warehouses in Leningrad. Already on June 23, 1941, a decision was made to reserve school and gymnasium premises suitable for warehouses as emergency reserve depots in case city residents, especially those in the southern districts, lost their homes due to bombing.
— Another question that you have been studying for a long time: why was there no mass evacuation?
Because Stalin had forbidden the creation of such services in large cities before the war, primarily in Moscow. We know about the appeal of the Chairman of the Moscow City Council Vasily Pronin to Stalin in early June 1941 with a request to allow the Moscow authorities to evacuate more than a million of the nonworking population from the city in the event of war. There was a reason for this: in the spring of 1941, an inspection of the readiness of the air defenses was conducted in Moscow and Leningrad, and very serious shortcomings were revealed. It was clear that the cities could not be 100% protected. The authorities had to do something in these conditions. And the simplest thing was to carry out a set of measures so that in the event of war, nonworking (children, elderly and disabled) people could be evacuated from the city: reserve the needed transport equipment, determine the location of these people, think through the logistics and supplies.
It was also decided to evacuate children, while their mothers remained in the city; they were used as labor. Therefore, many Leningraders, having seen how the evacuation of the civilian population was being carried out, refused to go.
— Do you agree that the evacuation was poorly organized?
Of course: the officials who were responsible for the evacuation also spoke about this. They did not prepare, did not think, did not expect, did not assume, that there would be such a need at all. If you are fighting the enemy on foreign territory, why evacuate? But at the same time, 650 thousand people were evacuated; this is a lot. A lot, but, as the head of the trade department of the Leningrad City Executive Committee Ivan Andreenko said, at least twice as many should have been evacuated. And at the beginning of the blockade there would have been not two and a half million people in the city, but one and a half million. And then there would have been more food for the smaller number of people.
— What myths about the blockade bother you the most, as a specialist?
There are many. One of the myths about the blockade is that Stalin did not like Leningrad and therefore did not help it. Why and for what reason does this myth exist? It is in order to explain why the blockade lasted so long, why the city was not given more aid; why not so much food was brought in; why the Leningrad theater of military operations was supposedly on the periphery. Other battles were shorter. But Stalin was an extremely pragmatic politician. And it is clear that, first of all, it was about the country holding out, and when it was necessary to take some resources from Leningrad, they were taken. In November 1941, Moscow insisted that anti-tank guns and mortars of all calibers be flown out of here, and even that the newly built Road of Life be used to transfer three divisions to Moscow. Stalin always said that the army was more important to us.
There is a myth about the colossal gap in supplies for the party nomenklatura and everyone else. Of course, any governing body functions more effectively when its members are not hungry. Yet even if we consider the most privileged tier—the so-called ‘special category’ rations—the 1943 norms allotted just two kilograms of meat and two bottles of red wine per month as supplemental provisions. It is clear that regular meals were also provided in the canteen, but there were no excesses. For example, the driver of the second secretary of the Leningrad City Committee of the CPSU Alexei Kuznetsov received a glass of tea with one piece of sugar and 50 grams of bread in the morning before going to work. And that's it. During the entire blockade, two people were expelled from the Smolny apparatus for being caught engaging in illicit resale of rationed goods. They were expelled from the party and brought to trial.
There is also a dispute about whether cats were brought to Leningrad to fight rats or not. And a number of serious historians say that nothing of the sort happened. I found documents according to which in 1943 the NKVD department checked the state of preservation of the emergency reserve and found out that up to 25% was spoiled, including because of rats. And they decided to bring a thousand cats — from Tyumen. And yes, it was a real special operation.
— What are the main dark spots of the blockade, in your opinion?
We have identified many problems, but said little about the heroes. The strategic significance of the Battle of Leningrad, the longest battle of the Great Patriotic War - it lasted from July 10, 1941 to August 9, 1944 - is colossal. We perceive it through the prism of tragedy. But Leningrad was the first city that the Germans wanted to take and did not take. They were forced to leave more than 350,000 of their troops here, including elite ones, who were originally planned to be sent to Moscow. And, as Zhukov admitted, this saved Moscow.
History does not tolerate the subjunctive mood, but we can imagine the development of events according to the worst scenario. And the heroic defense of Leningrad and the counteroffensive near Moscow instilled confidence in the British and American leadership that the Soviet Union was capable of continuing the fight and that it should be helped. In general, the anti-Hitler coalition was strengthened.
— Three years ago, the Institute of the History of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad opened, the creation of which was initiated by you. What is happening with the institute now?
There was a threat that the Leningrad school of the history of the blockade would simply disappear. When possible, I asked the president to support the creation of an institute within the administrative structure of the Museum of the Defense and Blockade of Leningrad; this was done. Now there are twenty of us, six who hold Docteur d'État degrees.
We start from the idea that the study of the blockade is impossible without teamwork, without the expert opinion of a number of specialists - historians, economists, lawyers, demographers.
— Are there any museums around the world that you would look to when creating a blockade museum?
I am most impressed by the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem in terms of the combination of museum and scholarly components. The situation is a little different at the Leningrad Defense and Siege Museum on Solyanoy street, where I was entrusted to head the scholarly division. It is a more traditional institution; a certain style has already been set here, and we must work with what we have. At the same time, the museum is growing. Over the past five years, the area of the premises at its disposal in the Solyanoy Gorodok area has grown approximately tenfold. We will develop the area and include different museum approaches and concepts.
— You are a professor at the European University at St. Petersburg, which turned 30 in 2024. How did your collaboration begin?
Since the early 2000s, I taught Russian foreign policy at the EUSP for foreigners, mostly Americans and Europeans. And in 2014, I transferred to the EUSP full time. It was clear that the university has great potential.
From the very beginning, the University developed as a successful, advanced Master's program across the entire spectrum of social sciences and the humanities, and the mission has always been to improve the system of higher education in these areas in the country. At the same time, we actively experiment with academic programs and research while maintaining rigorous standards in more traditional disciplines. Gradually, we began cultivating highly specialized, in-demand fields: specialized centers and institutes began to appear at the European University at St. Petersburg. Currently, the University has 13 centers, two institutes (the Institute for the Rule of Law and the Institute of Interdisciplinary Health Research), five faculties, and dozens of Master’s and PhD programs.
— What new directions have been launched?
The University responds to various challenges. These include the Arctic, urban studies, climate, and relations with Eurasia, primarily with China. For example, the EUSP has a Centre for Social Research of the North. In the current conditions, the Arctic is one of the most important regions, which is the main resource base for economic development not only in the future, but also now. Glaciers are melting, the safe shipping season is increasing. The Northern Sea Route is the shortest route between the two largest markets in Eurasia, at least a third shorter than the traditional route through the Suez Canal. This is an opportunity to transport huge volumes of cargo, and there is no threat of piracy.
There is also the Center for Energy Policy. Russia is an energy superpower, and it is easier for potential investors to come to the European University and learn from us how the Russian energy sector functions than to conduct special studies. In particular, we explain why in the foreseeable future, in the 20 to 30 year horizon, we should not expect that the share of renewable, alternative energy sources in the Russian energy sector will be more than a few percent.
— What applied, more down-to-earth European University at St. Petersburg projects do you recommend?
Together with Yandex, we have established the MAST Applied Center for Machine Learning, Data Analysis, and Statistics. This is a major breakthrough: historians, art historians, anthropologists, and other scientists who have not previously worked with big data will be able to pose new research questions and answer them with the help of technical specialists.
We also have the UP Center for Humanistic Urbanism: here, sociologists, anthropologists, and urbanists work on practical projects in the field of urban development and management, and conduct academic and applied research. For example, since 2016, the UP Center has been running the “Your Budget” participatory budgeting project and has held so-called participatory design sessions for the project “Tuchkov buyan” [a historic industrial site on St. Petersburg’s Petrograd Side].
And of course, the Center for the Study of Ego-Documents "Prozhito" is collection of digitized diaries and memoirs in Russian (there are also blockade documents). This is the calling card of the European University - no one else has anything like it.
— Is there enough time for everything?
Not at all! For example, I would like to publish the minutes of the food commission, which was created on January 11, 1942 by the Military Council of the Leningrad Front for the purpose of strictly centralizing the distribution of extremely limited food resources. In the conditions of an acute food crisis, numerous petitions from military and civilian organizations were received by various authorities to increase food consumption, which led to an overspending of limited resources.
I was one of the first to start working with this material. This is a database of requests for help with food (from directors of enterprises, institutions, artists, academics, etc.) and decisions on them. The language of the requests is interesting, the language of communication between officials, the language of interaction between officials and citizens, the language of the old Bolsheviks, the language of the creative elite, the language of ordinary people, the intelligentsia, and teachers. All the material has been collected, largely processed, but so far there has been no opportunity to complete this work. A sabbatical, is needed, at least for several months, and a good book would come out!