Женя умерла 28 декабря в 12.00 час. утра 1941 г. (Zhenya died at 12:00 AM on 28th December 1941.)
This is how Tanya Savicheva(1), a 12 year-old girl from Petersburg, started her diary. And over the next 5 months, she added these notes:
“Grandma died at 3:00 PM on 25th January 1942
Leka died at 5:00 AM on 17th March 1942
Uncle Vasya died at 2:00 AM on 13th April 1942
Uncle Lesha died at 4:00 PM on 10th May 1942
Mama died at 7:30 AM on 13th May 1942
Savichevs died. Everyone died.”
8th September 1941 - 27th January 1944 – 872 days and 872 nights – this was the duration of the Siege of Leningrad. (Also known as the Leningrad Blockade)
1.5 million – This was the number of civilians and soldiers it killed.
1.4 million – This was the number of people who were evacuated from the besieged city but most died during evacuation due to Nazi bombardment or hunger.
I don’t want to do a Mastercard by comparing these deaths to others but just to give you an idea of the magnitude - This is 2.0% of the total deaths in the Second World War, 6.5% of those in Soviet Union, 20.7% of those in Nazi Germany, 333.5% of those in the UK and 358.4% of those in the United States(2). And this is math worked off the 1.5 million number and does not include any deaths during evacuation!
It is thus hardly a surprise that even though in the run up 27th January (the date when the Blockade ended), Saint Petersburg proudly wears patriotic flags, slogans and banners, it isn’t a day when the city celebrates; it’s a day when she remembers and mourns her dead.
It is impossible to live in Petersburg and not bump into people’s recollections of the Blockade. My Conversation teacher, Masha knew a lady who told her that when there was no food left, people ate paper, cement and concrete from walls, birds, dogs, cats, horses, rats, parts of their own flesh and even resorted to cannibalism. My friend Lida’s grandmother told her that her neighbours tried to steal her younger sister so they could eat her!
It is very easy to wince at these words and these stories but I cannot even imagine the helplessness and plight that could encourage such actions. One can only live it to know what it must be like. My own words, emotions and experiences fail me!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the man who spent 8 years in the Gulag (Soviet Forced Labour Camps) and was the first voice to tell the world of their existence, said:
“First Cell, First Love
How is one to take the title of this chapter? A cell and love in the same breath? Ah, well, probably it has to do with Leningrad during the blockade – and you were imprisoned in the Big House. In that case it would be very understandable. That’s why you were still alive – because they shoved you in there. It was the best place in Leningrad – not only for the interrogators...In Leningrad in those days no one washed and everyone’s face was covered with a black crust, but in the Big House prisoners were given a hot shower every tenth day. Well, it’s true that only the corridors were heated – for the jailors. The cells were left unheated, but after all, there were water pipes in the cells that worked and a toilet, and where else in Leningrad could you find that?”(3)
Here is a man who endured 8 years of hunger, humiliation, terror and torture in a system that crushed anyone that was sucked into it and yet somehow, it was better than being a free man out in the street in Leningrad during the Blockade!
If a picture says a thousand words, a video can hopefully do even better. Do spare three and a half minutes, if you can, to remember Leningrad and her people: http://video.mail.ru/mail/lopes290968/146/152.html
“Leningrad must die of starvation,” Hitler had roared. But she stands. Not only that, she has flourished as the cultural capital of Russia and an important business centre. She is a seductress but she doesn’t lure you with empty promises! Her beauty radiates from the golden domes of her churches as she elegantly dances along the gentle curves of her rivers and canals. Her palaces and museums adorn her soft skin and her gardens and parks give her a fresh energy with which she teases and surprises you. But most of all, much like her Kazan Cathedral, she welcomes you with arms wide open. And right now, she is home and for that I am grateful. Leningrad – I salute you!
Notes:
1. More on Tanya Savicheva and her diary, which was used as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Savicheva
2. The numbers may ignore the fact that Soviet Union had a larger population compared to Nazi Germany, UK and US but consider the fact that at the end of the war, the numbers of deaths in these countries as percentage of 1939 populations were recorded at 10.38%, 0.94% and 0.32% respectively. For the Soviet Union, this number stood at 13.71%. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties
3. From Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago (The Harvill Press 2003. Copyright © – The Russian Social Fund, 1985)
More on the Siege of Leningrad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad
Wednesday 28 January 2009
Sunday 25 January 2009
Freako-matri-nomics!
23 is a dangerous age! Nowadays, when the phone rings and my friends have “good news” or “something exciting” to report, it’s usually that they have just gotten engaged or fixed the wedding date or are pregnant...
Now, this is great. It’s a big moment in their lives and I feel very touched that I am one the first people they think of sharing these things with. Being here in Russia, it’s reassuring to see that our friendship has stood the test of distance...if only because we are glued to Google Talk or Skype half the time!
With a surge in such good news and somethings exciting, there are bound to be mistakes when occasionally someone somewhere sends the wedding or engagement invite to my address in Delhi, where I have not lived for the last 4.5 years! Sounds innocent enough, right? Well it is...till my mom or some other older woman in the family gets to it and thereon for the next month or so, all sentences begin with the fatal, “Aanchal, you’re getting older now...and you’re not married...”
What ensues is a battle for my independence, a struggle to retain the right to determine my future, for Liberty, Freedom and Justice – the fight to, at any cost, escape an arranged marriage!
Let me make my position clear – I do see some merit in arranged marriages. For one, both people are ready to make a commitment so it saves a lot of heart-ache that might come with a relationship in which one party is ready to tie the knot but the other one isn’t quite there yet! The second benefit, which probably doesn’t come with relationships, is ‘even’ expectations. Both parties are fairly clear on what the other wants from the very start so conflict on expectations is practically squeezed out. Let’s just say, it’s like walking into a mall with a shopping list so the chances that you end up with something you didn’t want after investing a lot of time looking for it are pretty slim.
But just because I see some health benefits of alcohol doesn’t mean I’m ready for what could be the worst hangover of my life! After all, arranged marriages unlike long-tested relationships come with the twin-problems that economists call moral hazard and adverse selection!
What am I talking about?
Well for starters, when parents arrange a match, just because they feel it is good for us doesn’t mean it actually is! Am at no level doubting their saintly intentions but I can’t help wonder that since they wouldn’t have to live with the consequences of their mistake, they are perhaps less cautious with our lives! The classic principal-agent problem under moral hazard!
And my biggest fear with those who end themselves up on the arranged marriages market is adverse selection! (Look at the size of this industry in India and it would be unfair to call it anything but a market!)
In economics, adverse selection describes the behaviour of insurance seekers – a person who displays riskier behaviour or is at a greater risk of loss is more likely to take up insurance than a person who is more risk averse and has his act together. So similarly, a person who was unable to make a relationship work or was unable to find a partner through normal means is more likely to end up on the arranged marriages market than someone who was able to make it all work!
Of course, my analysis is rather naive and doesn’t consider the many complications that go behind making relationships work. But the truth is out – moral hazard and adverse selection exist in this market and for that reason, I want to stay as far away as I can from arranged marriages! This isn’t to say that arranged marriages don’t work. I know many people who are very happily (‘arranged’ly) married!
It is said that marriages are made in heaven so God has to make sure we meet ‘the one’. But He probably got tired of giving us low tolerance to alcohol or creating perfect chance coincidence meetings – giving us the same bad taste in movies or taking us to the same dance class where we could bond over how inelastic we are!
And then He came up with arranged marriages so He could just free-ride of our parents’ efforts and the world would still run...
Now, this is great. It’s a big moment in their lives and I feel very touched that I am one the first people they think of sharing these things with. Being here in Russia, it’s reassuring to see that our friendship has stood the test of distance...if only because we are glued to Google Talk or Skype half the time!
With a surge in such good news and somethings exciting, there are bound to be mistakes when occasionally someone somewhere sends the wedding or engagement invite to my address in Delhi, where I have not lived for the last 4.5 years! Sounds innocent enough, right? Well it is...till my mom or some other older woman in the family gets to it and thereon for the next month or so, all sentences begin with the fatal, “Aanchal, you’re getting older now...and you’re not married...”
What ensues is a battle for my independence, a struggle to retain the right to determine my future, for Liberty, Freedom and Justice – the fight to, at any cost, escape an arranged marriage!
Let me make my position clear – I do see some merit in arranged marriages. For one, both people are ready to make a commitment so it saves a lot of heart-ache that might come with a relationship in which one party is ready to tie the knot but the other one isn’t quite there yet! The second benefit, which probably doesn’t come with relationships, is ‘even’ expectations. Both parties are fairly clear on what the other wants from the very start so conflict on expectations is practically squeezed out. Let’s just say, it’s like walking into a mall with a shopping list so the chances that you end up with something you didn’t want after investing a lot of time looking for it are pretty slim.
But just because I see some health benefits of alcohol doesn’t mean I’m ready for what could be the worst hangover of my life! After all, arranged marriages unlike long-tested relationships come with the twin-problems that economists call moral hazard and adverse selection!
What am I talking about?
Well for starters, when parents arrange a match, just because they feel it is good for us doesn’t mean it actually is! Am at no level doubting their saintly intentions but I can’t help wonder that since they wouldn’t have to live with the consequences of their mistake, they are perhaps less cautious with our lives! The classic principal-agent problem under moral hazard!
And my biggest fear with those who end themselves up on the arranged marriages market is adverse selection! (Look at the size of this industry in India and it would be unfair to call it anything but a market!)
In economics, adverse selection describes the behaviour of insurance seekers – a person who displays riskier behaviour or is at a greater risk of loss is more likely to take up insurance than a person who is more risk averse and has his act together. So similarly, a person who was unable to make a relationship work or was unable to find a partner through normal means is more likely to end up on the arranged marriages market than someone who was able to make it all work!
Of course, my analysis is rather naive and doesn’t consider the many complications that go behind making relationships work. But the truth is out – moral hazard and adverse selection exist in this market and for that reason, I want to stay as far away as I can from arranged marriages! This isn’t to say that arranged marriages don’t work. I know many people who are very happily (‘arranged’ly) married!
It is said that marriages are made in heaven so God has to make sure we meet ‘the one’. But He probably got tired of giving us low tolerance to alcohol or creating perfect chance coincidence meetings – giving us the same bad taste in movies or taking us to the same dance class where we could bond over how inelastic we are!
And then He came up with arranged marriages so He could just free-ride of our parents’ efforts and the world would still run...
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