The Siege of Leningrad

FAIN: FT-51348-03

Richard Bidlack
Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA 24450-2116)

I am co-authoring with a Russian historian a book for Yale University Press on the siege of Leningrad. The 350-page book will include approximately 100 translated documents from Russian archives. Our work focuses on the city's civilians and describes how they attempted to survive enemy bombardment and starvation, which claimed about one million victims. We explain for the first time relations among top political, NKVD (secret police), and military leaders. We also reveal the inner workings of the control and punitive apparatus and changes in popular political mood as measured by top-secret party and NKVD informants' reports. The grant would free up time to make substantial progress on the book manuscript.