Where the road of life led from besieged Leningrad. Series of publications “The Small Road of Life: An Unknown Blockade. Creation of a railway line

The road of life. The road of life. The “Road of Life,” the only military strategic transport route that connected besieged Leningrad with the country in September 1941 and March 1943, passed through Lake Ladoga. During navigation periods... ... Encyclopedic reference book "St. Petersburg"

The road of life- In 1941 1942 this was the name of the road on the ice of Lake Ladoga, which connected Leningrad, blocked by German troops, with the “Mainland”, i.e. the rear. Food and ammunition were delivered to the city along this road, and they were taken out of the city along it... ... Dictionary of popular words and expressions

The road of life- the only military strategic transport route that connected besieged Leningrad with the country in September 1941, March 1943, passed through Lake Ladoga. During navigation periods, transportation along the “D. and." were carried out along the water route... ... St. Petersburg (encyclopedia)

THE ROAD OF LIFE- during the Great Patriotic War, the only transport route through Lake Ladoga. (during periods of navigation on water, in winter on ice), connecting from September 1941 to March 1943 blockaded Leningrad with the country ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

The road of life- ROAD, and, f. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 … Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

THE ROAD OF LIFE- during the Great Patriotic War, the only transport route across Lake Ladoga (during periods of navigation on water, in winter on ice), connecting blockaded Leningrad with the country in September 1941-March 1943. Source: Encyclopedia Oteche...Russian history

THE ROAD OF LIFE- ROAD OF LIFE, during the Great Patriotic War, the only transport route across Lake Ladoga (during periods of navigation on water, in winter on ice), connecting from September 1941 to March 1943 blockaded Leningrad with the country ... encyclopedic Dictionary

The road of life- A memorial kilometer sign on the Kushelevka Piskarevka railway section, near the Bogoslovskoe cemetery “Road of Life” during the Great Patriotic War, the only transport route across Lake Ladoga. During periods of navigation on water, ... ... Wikipedia

The road of life- (“Road of Life”), the only military strategic transport route across Lake Ladoga, connecting from September 1941 to March 1943 Leningrad, blocked by Nazi troops, with the rear regions of the country during the Great... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

The road of life- Book High The route on the ice of Lake Ladoga, along which during the Great Patriotic War besieged Leningrad was supplied with food and weapons. The victories near Leningrad helped create the Road of Life on the ice of Ladoga, which saved many... ... Phraseological Dictionary of the Russian Literary Language

Books

Road of Life, Lindes Emma Category: Miscellaneous Publisher: Nestor-History, Manufacturer: Nestor-History, Buy for 770 UAH (Ukraine only)
The Road of Life, Lindes Emma, 1970. Former Cambridge graduate, handsome Conrad Helldorf returns to his native Berlin to find out the truth about his father, who died before his birth in the fall of 1944. Conrad’s new life... Category: Contemporary foreign prose Publisher:

November 18th 1941
The beginning of laying the “Road of Life”. During the Great Patriotic War, the 88th separate bridge-building battalion began ice reconnaissance of Lake Ladoga with the aim of creating an ice road to besieged Leningrad. Work to create the route, which led about 20 thousand people, began in October. On November 19, an order was signed for the troops of the Leningrad Front “On the organization of a road and tractor road across Lake Ladoga.”
On November 22, the first convoy of GAZ-AA trucks entered the ice. The ice road, which became known as Military Automobile Road No. 101 (VAD-101), began operating on November 26, 1941. The entire road had to be moved to a new track due to ice fatigue. And during the first month of work, the road was transferred to new routes four times, and some sections of it even more often. Trucks regularly delivered food

The route was laid out and marked with milestones. The Ice Road was a well-organized highway that provided drivers with confident driving at high speed. The track was served by 350 traffic controllers, whose tasks included dispersing cars, indicating the direction of movement, monitoring the safety of ice and other duties. The road has become a complex engineering structure. Its builders made road signs, milestones, portable shields, bridges, built bases, warehouses, heating and medical stations, food and technical assistance stations, workshops, telephone and telegraph stations, and adapted various means of camouflage. This work required dedication and courage, as it had to be carried out under any conditions - severe frosts, freezing winds, blizzards, shelling and enemy air raids. In addition, lighthouse lanterns with blue glass were displayed - first at every 450-500 m, and then at 150-200 m
On November 24, 1941, the Military Council of the Leningrad Front adopted resolution No. 00419 “On the construction of Military Highway No. 102 (VAD-102).” Thus, now the delivery of goods to Leningrad began to be carried out along two roads.
The road consisted of two ring routes, each of which had two separate directions of movement - for freight traffic (to the city) and for empty traffic or evacuation (from the city). The first route for transporting goods to the city ran along the route Zhikharevo - Zhelannye - Troitskoye - Lavrovo - station. Lake Ladoga, the length of the route was 44 km; for empty vehicles and evacuation from the city - Art. Lake Ladoga or Borisova Griva - Vaganovsky descent - Lavrovo - Gorodishche - Zhikharevo with a length of 43 km. The total length of the flight along the first ring road was 83 km.
The second route for cargo transportation ran along the route Voybokalo - Kobona - Vaganovsky Spusk - station. Lake Ladoga or Borisova Griva (58 km) and for empty or evacuation - station. Lake Ladoga or Borisova Griva - Vaganovsky descent - Lavrovo - Babanovo - Voybokalo (53 km). The total length of the second ring route was 111 km. The former Tikhvin - Novaya Ladoga highway ceased to function, but was maintained in working order.
Despite frosts and snowstorms, enemy artillery fire and air strikes, and the enemy’s occupation of Tikhvin on November 8, the movement of freight vehicles did not stop for almost a single day. In November-December, 16,449 tons of cargo were delivered along the route.
The “Road of Life” is not only a route on the ice of the lake, it is a path that had to be overcome from the railway station on the western shore of the lake to the railway station on the eastern shore and back. The road worked until the last possible opportunity. In mid-April, the air temperature began to rise to 12 - 15°C and the ice cover of the lake began to quickly collapse. A large amount of water accumulated on the surface of the ice. For a whole week - from April 15 to 21 - the vehicles walked through solid water, in some places up to 45 cm deep. On the last trips, the vehicles did not reach the shore and carried the loads by hand. Further movement on the ice became dangerous, and on April 21 the Ladoga Ice Route was officially closed, but in fact it functioned until April 24, as some drivers, despite the order to close the route, continued to travel on Ladoga. When the lake began to open up and traffic on the highway stopped, highway workers moved 65 tons of food products from the eastern to the western shore. In total, during the winter of 1941/42, 361,109 tons of various cargoes were delivered to Leningrad along the ice route, including 262,419 tons of food.

This was forty years ago. Having failed to capture Leningrad by storm without overcoming its defenses, the enemy hoped for the quick death of the city from starvation as a result of a complete blockade. Obviously, the German command did not even think about the possibility of organizing any serious communication across Lake Ladoga. But the concept of the impossible became very relative when it came to saving Leningrad. For 152 days, from November 22, 1941 to April 24, 1942, and 98 days, from December 23, 1942 to March 30, 1943, there was a Road of Life - an ice route laid along Lake Ladoga, along which the city received the most necessary things in order to live and fight. Chauffeur Ivan Vasilievich Maksimov from the first to the last day he drove cars with cargo for Leningrad and took people out. He tells how it happened. Photographs of the war years, collected by participants in the Ladoga epic, explain his story.

They don't know on earth yet
Scarier and more joyful than the road.

“On the night of November 22, the first column of ten vehicles descended onto the ice from the western shore. I was in this column. It was a dark and windy night over the lake. There was no snow yet, and the black stripes of the ice field often seemed like open water. I won’t hide it, fear froze our hearts, our hands were shaking: probably both from tension and from weakness - for four days, like all Leningraders, we received a cracker a day... But our convoy was just in Leningrad And I saw how people died from. hunger... Salvation was on the eastern shore. We understood that we had to get there at any cost. Not all the cars reached the shore, but the first group move was completed. I even remembered the first hot soup that we received. The next day, these cars went back. , bringing bread to Leningraders. While the ice was thin, it was impossible to fully load the car. They adapted to the situation - they used sled trailers to reduce the load on the ice.
The first flights are etched in my memory as the most difficult. We drove slowly, tensely, as if testing the way... After a few days, we took a closer look, felt the road, and gained confidence.
The harsh winter of 1941 seemed to be rushing to our rescue. Every day the ice became thicker and stronger. Traffic intensity and vehicle loading increased. For the first month I did not leave my car. It was also my home... Having crossed the lake, I quickly handed over the cargo, drove to the side, covered the “front” with the cabin with a tarpaulin in order to retain the heat from the hot engine longer, and fell asleep. After two or three hours I woke up from the cold, started the engine, took the cargo and went on the flight again.
People from Leningrad were transported from the western to the eastern shore. These flights were the most stressful and painful for me. Exhausted from hunger, people lay and sat motionless, seemingly indifferent. There were cases when paramedics, removing people from a car, reported that someone had died on the road. From pity, anger and grief, my heart sank, a lump came to my throat... I was always in a hurry when I was traveling with people, it seemed like I wouldn’t be able to do everything in time and I was terribly afraid of delays on the road.
At the end of December the number of flights increased. When counting, I was among the leading ones. Once on the eastern bank, in Kobon, where food warehouses were located, before the vehicle was unloaded, I was called to the commander and presented with a gift from the Leningraders. These were warm things. Squeezing the gift in my hands, I listened to the words of gratitude, but in response I could not say a single word... I did not cry, only tears flowed and flowed down my cheeks.
I was given a day of rest. They sent me to a sanitary station - within a month I was so overgrown that I couldn’t even see my eyes, a long beard had grown, my clothes had become salty and stiff. This was the first break since the start of work on the ice track.
The road was quickly developed. Mass transportation began. Trucks on the highway traveled in blizzards and blizzards, day and night, often falling into ice holes pierced by bombs and shells, dying before reaching the shore, or drowning. But despite incredible difficulties, food delivery did not stop. Soon we even abandoned camouflage, and at night, with headlights on, cars walked in a continuous stream.
The road was under fire all the time. However, most of the bombs and shells fell nearby. The drivers maneuvered and changed speed. The road workers immediately found new, workarounds or “patched” the road - they laid wooden walkways and froze the decking. The route was destroyed, but the road continued to live.
Driving on ice itself was difficult and dangerous. Under the influence of strong winds and changes in the water level in the lake, frequent movements of the ice fields occurred, and ice mountains, sometimes five to ten meters high, appeared along the way. Cracks and fissures appeared. It was necessary to build a lot of switchboards and walkways. During the winter of 1941 - 1942, the bridge-building battalion installed 147 prefabricated bridges on the ice of the lake, capable of withstanding the weight of not only loaded vehicles, but even tanks.
Gradually, the road, one might say, became settled. Along the route, tents and snow houses appeared for road workers and repairmen who lived here to come to the aid of the drivers at any moment. In such houses, “potbelly stoves” were installed, and telephone cables were pulled to them.
At the seventh kilometer of the route there was a tent for a sanitary and medical station. Olya Pisarenko, a military paramedic, lived there throughout the harsh winter. She surprised even the Ice Road veterans with her courage and endurance. She worked without rest or sleep, often under severe fire providing medical assistance to the wounded and frostbitten.
One day, her section of the road was bombed by sixteen fascist planes. Bombs riddled the highway. Olya fell into a hole. With difficulty they helped her get out, but she did not leave the track, she was barely alive and frostbitten, she continued to help the wounded.
A front actually passed along the highway. And every flight completed was like a battle won. The track was extremely busy. Here are entries from the diary of the headquarters of the 64th regiment, whose personnel were always on the ice and servicing the road.
“On November 23, 1941, several horses and cars fell through the ice.
5th of December. Fascist air raid on the fourteenth kilometer... A car with gasoline was set on fire. Between the tenth and fifteenth kilometers, thirty shells exploded, and about one hundred and forty bombs were dropped along the entire route. Between the twentieth and twenty-fifth kilometers a longitudinal crack formed."
Despite everything, traffic along the highway did not stop. Immediately after the raids, road workers went out onto the ice, laying new roads. Immediately the traffic controllers ran to the cars, showing the drivers a new path. And the traffic controllers were Leningrad Komsomol girls. They stood in the icy wind or snow at a distance of 350-400 meters from each other during the day with flags, and at night with lit bat lanterns. They kept their heroic watch around the clock in any weather.
In January, heavy anti-aircraft artillery could be installed on the strengthened ice. When it appeared, it was almost impossible for the enemy to precisely bomb the road.
The route was covered by troops of the Ladoga air defense region, anti-aircraft artillery and fighter aviation regiments of the front and navy, soldiers of rifle units and marines, border troops and an NKVD division. All approaches to the Ice Road were mined. As a result of all these measures, the flow of goods to Leningrad increased every day.
A team was even organized to lift cars and tanks from the bottom of the lake. After repairs, they returned to service again.
Road participants rejoiced at every increase in rations for Leningraders. On December 25 there was the first increase in the bread quota. The minimum was 250 grams per day for workers, 125 grams for everyone else. But already in April, Leningraders were given an average of half a kilogram of bread and the norms for other products were increased. The city lived and continued to fight.
In April, the snow began to melt, the water rose, and it filled the ruts of the road. That's when our torment began. You start slipping or braking a little, and the ice beneath you goes into the water. On April 24, the route was closed.
The legendary Road of Life existed for 152 days.

Tributes to our memory of war heroes sometimes bypass the names of those who ensured victory in the rear. But in vain.
interesting additions to the discussion a year ago -

March 27th, 2014 , 08:28 am

Today I want to talk about the Road of Life, which during the war connected besieged Leningrad with the mainland.

Being a native Leningrader, from childhood I was faced with the echoes of the blockade, despite the fact that the conscious part of my childhood fell already in the eighties. My now deceased grandmother survived the blockade and was evacuated along the Road of Life in the winter of 1942. She didn’t often talk about the blockade and evacuation, but occasionally she did, with details that were then impossible to hear anywhere else.

In our family, as in many Leningrad families, there was a special attitude towards bread: it could not be thrown away. Even now I rarely do this, and if I do, it’s with a feeling that something is wrong. Of course, we had lessons on the history of the siege at school, and there were school plays on this topic. We read, for example, Vera Inber and Olga Berggolts. And today in schools they talk about the Leningrad blockade and the Road of Life. Nowadays, beautifully designed books about the blockade are published, written in child-friendly language. So the events of that time are not forgotten.

But still, I probably won’t be wrong if I say that almost no one has a complete picture of what happened then. I don't have it either. Already as an adult, I became interested in understanding what the Road of Life was like. I studied a lot of different materials, read several hundred memoirs of siege survivors and soldiers of the Leningrad Front, and last winter I went twice to the shores of Ladoga - to those places through which the evacuation route passed.

As a child, I imagined a chain of German soldiers who, holding hands, surrounded Leningrad, and did not let anyone or anything in there. And in principle this was not far from the true state of affairs. Look at the map showing the situation on September 8, 1941, when German troops captured Shlisselburg:

The areas in red on the map are areas controlled by Soviet troops; gray - controlled by troops of Germany, Finland and Spain. It is clearly visible that, despite the fact that Soviet troops occupied significant territories around Leningrad, there was no land connection between the city and the outside world.

This situation suited Hitler well, who concentrated troops to attack Moscow. He did not weaken them in order to capture Leningrad, which would hardly have been possible without heavy losses. Instead, it was decided to starve Leningrad out. Therefore, the front stabilized in the position shown on the map. For a long time.

By the time the blockade began, there were no particular problems with the supply of food to Leningrad, even though food cards were introduced in the city back in July. But after September 8, supplying the city became possible only in two ways: air and water. Both routes could not provide sufficient volumes for the city's needs. Therefore, from September 15, food distribution standards began to be reduced in Leningrad.

The decline took place in stages, and finally reached the point where people could no longer survive. From November 20, 1941, workers were entitled to 250 grams, and employees, dependents and children - 125 grams of bread per day. Moreover, it was not at all the kind of bread that we are used to now. Up to half of the blockade bread was supplemented with impurities that were inedible or had low nutritional value, such as hydrocellulose. The composition and ratio of the components included in the bread changed depending on what was available at each moment. Therefore, there is no single recipe for blockade bread.

People began to die - from hunger and constant shelling and bombing. The water supply was cut off. Transport stopped.

As I already said, the supply of Leningrad at the beginning of the blockade was carried out in two ways - by water and by air. In the opposite direction, the property of Leningrad factories, workers of these factories and their families were evacuated. There was no talk of mass evacuation of city residents. This question will come up later. In the meantime, a serious problem was emerging: how to evacuate the remaining plant equipment to the rear, along with valuable specialists, when winter is approaching and ice is already beginning to rise on Ladoga? After all, the aviation of that time had very little carrying capacity, and the fleet could not move on ice.

On November 13, 1941, an order was issued on the Leningrad Front “On organizing the construction of an ice road along Lake Ladoga.” The new route was intended for freight traffic. Already on November 20, the first sleigh and horse-drawn convoy passed along the ice road, and on November 22, trucks started moving. It is interesting that navigation on Ladoga ended only on November 25. For three days, the ships walked along channels cut into the ice, parallel to trucks and horse-drawn carts.

Don't think that the trucks simply drove onto the ice and drove along it. In modern terms, the ice road was a very serious project - both organizationally and technically. And I’ll tell you more about this.

In the meantime, let's fast forward to our days and drive along the highway that today is called the Road of Life. It is along it that most of the monuments dedicated to the Leningrad siege are located. It is along this route that schoolchildren are taken on excursions, introducing them to the events of those times. What kind of route is this?

The Rovnoye Highway runs from St. Petersburg through Vsevolozhsk to the village of Vaganovo on the shores of Lake Ladoga. During the war, a narrow paved road ran through approximately the same places, one of those along which cargo, mainly food, was transported to Leningrad by trucks and buses, and evacuees from Leningrad.

It seems that here it is, the land part of the Road of Life. Just try to find the memories of those who evacuated from Leningrad this way. You won't find it right away. Everywhere the evidence is the same: we traveled by train to Ladoga, and from there through Ladoga - by barge or truck. We went by train! What then does this memorial road have to do with it? This is one of the inconsistencies that I thought about as I tried to piece together a picture of how this system functioned.

The answer is simple: during the first period of evacuation, people were actually transported in cars directly from Leningrad, and then on them through Ladoga. At first glance, it was even more convenient: the trip took place without a transfer. But the journey from the city to Ladoga in the open back of a truck took many hours; for exhausted people it was a difficult ordeal, and there were not enough cars. Therefore, very soon they began to use the railway to transport people from Leningrad. And they used it throughout almost the entire blockade. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of evacuees were actually transported from Leningrad to Ladoga not by truck, but by train.

But still, this part of the Road of Life is important for the memory of people born after the blockade. Let's drive along it, especially since these days it only takes one hour.

To be honest, I waited a long time for good weather for both of my trips to places associated with the Road of Life. But this winter in St. Petersburg turned out to be extremely cloudy. Without waiting for clear skies, I drove on cloudy days. The photos also turned out a little cloudy. But evacuation along the Road of Life also did not always take place under clear skies. So maybe it’s good that my weather reality turned out to be unembellished.

The Flower of Life memorial complex was created in memory of the children who died in besieged Leningrad.

Eight steles have pages from Tanya Savicheva’s siege diary. A Leningrad girl from a large family (there were eight children) kept a diary that ended with the words “The Savichevs died. Everyone died. Tanya is the only one left."

As it turned out later, Tanya’s older sister, Nina Savicheva, remained alive. She worked as a designer at a factory, and since transport in the city did not work, she spent the night there. One day, the plant and its employees were urgently evacuated, and there was no way to even inform relatives about it. This happened in besieged Leningrad. Nina ended up in the Kalinin region, from where her letters did not reach besieged Leningrad. Tanya considered her sister dead, because if a person did not come home for a long time, then everyone understood that he died - during shelling, or by falling and not getting up from hunger. However, Nina lived a long life, and only last year she ended her earthly journey at the age of ninety-four.

Tanya's fate was more tragic. Sick and very weak, Tanya Savicheva was evacuated from Leningrad in 1942, but she was never able to recover. In 1944, at the age of fourteen, Tanya died.

Despite the fact that Tanya Savicheva’s diary became public domain after the war, nothing was known about her fate until 1971, when young search engines discovered a record of the death of T.N. in the archives of the nursing home in Ponetaevka, Gorky Region. Savicheva from intestinal tuberculosis.

The city of Vsevolozhsk, located on the memorial route, like Leningrad, found itself inside the blockade ring. Vsevolozhsk enterprises worked for the needs of the front, and nineteen military airfields were located in the Vsevolozhsk region. Now in Vsevolozhsk there is a memorial complex “Rumbolovskaya Mountain”.

Next to the metal leaves of oak and laurel, symbolizing life and glory, there is a stele with the words of Olga Berggolts:

“Bread came to us along the road of life,
dear friendship of many to many.
They don't know on earth yet
A more terrible and joyful road."

Olga Berggolts. In 1938, during interrogations in prison, her unborn child was knocked out of her. They demanded that he confess to participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy. Six months later they were released. Friends were happy: it was good that the teeth were intact. Lucky.

Read the recently published diaries of the poetess. She not only did not like the Soviet system, but also did not accept it with her whole being. I saw the absurdity of what was happening and did not want to live in it. Rarely do you read more balanced and frank discussions about the essence of the Soviet system. Bergholz did not at all share the values by which the country tried to live.

During the blockade in Leningrad, a radio was constantly playing on the streets. This was necessary so that people could hear the air raid warning. The rest of the time, a metronome was pounding through the loudspeakers or broadcasts were playing. Leningrad Radio broadcasts were broadcast daily. And one of the voices of this radio was the voice of Olga Berggolts. She wrote and read for Leningraders, clearly understanding that it was on these days that she was fulfilling her earthly destiny. After all, we can’t even imagine what Olga Berggolts’ voice meant to the exhausted Leningraders. How many people have lived listening to her lines?

“No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten” - these are also the words of Olga Berggolts. And it’s better not to put pathos into this line. Olga Berggolts is not external pathos or patriotism. This is something much more important - the work of the soul.

Here, in Vsevolozhsk, next to one of the intersections, a monument to the “lorry” was erected.

Lorry trucks (GAZ-AA trucks) were built before the war in Nizhny Novgorod under an American license, and were initially copies of Model AA Ford trucks. Subsequently, some changes were made to the design of Soviet cars. Simple and unpretentious to operate and repair, these trucks have become the main mode of transport on the Road of Life. In their open bodies they carried food to Leningrad, and people from Leningrad.

Today the memorial route is a good road, but during the war the road route passed along broken secondary, sometimes forest, routes. The modern road is built next to one of them.

A memorial sign has been erected near one of the surviving sections of the old road.

Many evacuees died on the road. There is a mass grave and a memorial to the dead on the route. Of course, this mass grave of Leningraders who died on the way to the evacuation is far from the only one.

The last turn, and the road goes to Ladoga. Here the cars descended onto the ice and continued their journey along the ice track.

Having driven along the memorial Road of Life, let us remember that few Leningraders got to the Ladoga ice by car. Most people traveled from Leningrad to Lake Ladoga by train.

Before the war, the Irinovskaya railway line was lightly loaded and was used mainly by summer residents. In order to make regular train movement along this line possible, an uninterrupted supply of coal and firewood was organized for the locomotives. The problem arose of refueling steam locomotives with water: the water supply system in Leningrad did not work. We got out of the situation by using fire tanks, which were used to transport water from the Neva to the Finlyandsky Station, fortunately the supply was not far away. The locomotives, which were mostly in disrepair, were repaired. All this was organized not even in weeks, but in days, and sometimes hours were counted. After all, people in the city were dying every minute.

Another problem was that the railway workers, including the drivers, were extremely exhausted, and few of them could work, especially under the intense schedule required to transport evacuees. Therefore, by decision of the Military Council, railway workers began to receive increased nutrition, and four additional teams of drivers, train builders and repairmen were delivered from Moscow by plane.

If during the first period of the blockade only enterprises with employees were evacuated, then on January 21, 1942, mass evacuation of Leningrad residents began. For almost all of these people, the path to evacuation began at the crowded Finland Station.

One of the locomotives that drove trains with evacuees is now permanently parked at the Ladoga Lake station.

Today the Ladoga Lake station, located near the shore of Ladoga, is a dead-end station. She was like that before the war. But in the fall of 1941, large-scale construction began around the station. The road was extended several kilometers north to the village of Morye. The new site was equipped with large freight stations Kostyl and Bolt with powerful piers. The stations carried out transshipment of cargo and petroleum products. Nowadays, such construction would probably take many years and, due to its scale, would be a national project widely covered in the press. But then the days counted, and information about construction, naturally, was not disseminated.

To what place were people transported along this railway? No, not to the Ladoga Lake station, which now has memorial status. And not to the Borisova Griva station, although this is what many evacuees call it in their memoirs. Look at the diagram of the railway junction built by the beginning of 1942.

Between the stations Borisova Griva and Lake Ladoga, the Kabotazhnaya station was built, and next to it the Borisova Griva evacuation point. It was there that trains carrying evacuees arrived. Cars were boarded there to cross frozen Ladoga. Today, the journey by electric train from St. Petersburg to Borisovaya Griva takes just over an hour. Those blockade trains covered this in perhaps thirty-one hours, and at the same time there were large delays along the way. Before boarding the train, evacuees received bread for a day in advance using their cards, but if the train was late to the final destination by more than a day and a half, then upon arrival at the evacuation point people were fed a hot lunch.

To get into the vehicles, evacuees had to stand in huge queues. In addition to the “one and a half” with open bodies, which accommodated twelve people, multi-seat buses were also used on the ice track. But there were few buses, and they mostly carried children and the sick. It happened that there were interruptions in the supply of transport, and people were delayed in Borisovaya Griva for several days.

The quiet platform “44 km”, surrounded on all sides by forest, does not remind us in any way that it was at this place during the war that the Kabotazhnaya station with an evacuation point was located. It is now difficult to drive up to the platform by car, so I used an available photograph of the platform taken in the summer.

The place where cars enter the Ladoga ice is considered to be the Vaganovsky Descent, where the “Broken Ring” monument is erected. In fact, there were several places to get onto the ice, since the ice routes were periodically moved due to ice fatigue. But there is still reason to believe that it was through Vaganovsky Descent that the largest number of cars working on the Road of Life passed through.

Now there is a path through the reeds from the Vaganovsky descent to the Ladoga ice.

And here it is, frozen Ladoga. In winter there are many fishermen, and cruise ships sailing not far from this place, traveling from St. Petersburg to Svir and to the island of Valaam. During the blockade winters, there were busy highways here. I will tell you about them, but a little later. After all, it’s time for us to leave Borisov Griva and Vaganovo, and move to the final destination of the ice route - Kobona. But we have not yet looked at the “Road of Life” museum, located on “this side”, in the village of Osinovets.

The Road of Life Museum is a branch of the Central Naval Museum. In several rooms there is an exhibition dedicated to the history of the creation and operation of the Road of Life. On the site next to the museum there are samples of military equipment that took part in the battles on Ladoga and defended the road. The Li-2 aircraft was also installed there, at that time the most common transport aircraft in the Soviet Union. These aircraft also took part in the delivery of goods to Leningrad and the evacuation of the population, but they mainly transported especially important cargo and especially valuable people, so they did not make any difference in mass transportation. But on special occasions they helped out a lot.

The creation of an ice road across Lake Ladoga was another major project completed in just ten days. Two oncoming traffic lanes, each ten meters wide, were laid on the ice by artificially freezing the ice. Nutritional and heating stations with the ability to provide medical care and technical assistance were installed along the entire route. A road service was created with several dozen tractors. There were traffic controllers (mostly women) working on the road, for whom posts were set up. In other words, a functioning highway with all the necessary infrastructure was built in the shortest possible time.

The routes were periodically re-laid in new places. The map below shows the main routes for vehicles on the Ladoga ice. Between December 1941 and April 1942, half a million people were evacuated from Leningrad, mainly along the Osinovets - Kobona highway.

Every trip along the ice route was a risky business. Columns of cars were regularly subjected to German artillery fire and bombing. But even without shelling, there was a danger for vehicles to go under the ice along with people, since the ice, even frozen, got tired. For this reason, the tracks were regularly re-frozen - away from the old ones.

When a car fell through the ice, people usually could not get out of the body and died. The driver sometimes managed to jump out - the constantly open door of the cab increased his chances of salvation, and sometimes he sank to the bottom along with the car. Other cars were forbidden to stop in such cases in order to avoid a repetition of the tragedy.

A significant number of memories of people evacuated in Ladoga contain evidence of the car in front or behind going under the ice. My grandmother also witnessed this. There is no reason not to trust these memories. On the other hand, statistics show that during two ice navigations along the Road of Life, a quarter of all cars working on it were lost. On the one hand, this is a lot, but if you take into account the number of trips that each “lorry” made (sometimes up to four per day), then the likelihood for evacuees to die by falling through the ice with their car was not as high as is commonly believed.

During the first winter of the siege, the Ladoga ice track was open until April 24. The last cars were already walking through the layer of water.

The monument to the “lorry” was erected not only in Vsevolozhsk, but also in the village of Dusyevo. For those heading to Kobona by car, Dusyevo is the very place where you need to turn north from the Murmansk highway.

The evacuees reached the villages of Kobona and Lavrovo by another route - along the ice of Lake Ladoga. The share of the first evacuees was completely unenviable: in the same cars in which they crossed Ladoga, they were transported further - along a bypass road to Tikhvin, which took up to four days. Many people, exhausted by hunger, could not stand the long journey in the cold in the open back of a semi-truck and died. Soon the section of the railway route to the Volkhovstroy station was restored, and people began to be transported by car from the Ladoga shore to this station. But this also took a lot of time, and in addition, reduced the capacity of the road.

Therefore, it was decided to build a railway from the main line through Lavrovo and Kobona to Lednevo. And not just a railway, but along with it another large railway junction for cargo transshipment, the Kobono-Karedzhi port. And again the count was not even weeks, but days. And again we coped with this task.

The following diagram shows how this road went. It is believed that it began at Voybokalo station, but in fact the branch was located several kilometers west of the station. However, this does not change matters. By the way, this map also shows a pipeline for petroleum products, laid along the bottom of Lake Ladoga in May 1942 to supply Leningrad. Another serious project of that time.

The road was built quickly. In the absence of the necessary materials, what was at hand was used. For example, in some areas the sleepers were lined with snow instead of sand. Thirty-five kilometers of railway, including a drawbridge, were built in twenty days.

The place where this railway passed is now hidden under a layer of Ladoga water. The fact is that changes in water level in Lake Ladoga are subject to a long-term cycle. The winter of 1941/42 occurred at the lowest point of this cycle; The water level in Ladoga at that moment was very low, and the railway passed along the opened Ladoga bottom.

Berths of the Kobono-Karedzhi port built in 1942:

In the village of Lednevo, the extreme point of the built railway, now nothing reminds of military events. Perhaps because goods were transported through Lednevo, but not people.

Cobon's case is different. In the winter of 1941/42, the village located at the water crossing of the Kobonki River and both Ladoga canals became a major transit evacuation center.

In Kobon, people made a second transfer - this time from cars to trains. Freight wagons were used to transport evacuees. They were additionally equipped with stoves and bunks, and windows were made in them. There were no toilets in the carriages. The trains took three thousand people each and set off on flights without a schedule, as they filled up. Sometimes there were delays in the arrival of trains, and then thousands of people gathered in Kobon, awaiting further departure. Many died here, but not from hunger, but, on the contrary, from the fact that they immediately ate the rations given to them for the journey. For exhausted blockade survivors, a large portion of food turned out to be fatal.

Yet Kobona is remembered fondly by most people. Here they received a full hot meal for the first time in many months, and here they were given half a liter of boiling water. Now you can’t even understand what a joy it was for the exhausted Leningraders, these half liters of boiling water. The bulk of the evacuees, awaiting departure by train, were placed in heated buildings of the school, the village council and the inactive church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, where an evacuation hospital was set up.

Now the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker has been restored, and services are held there.

The village council occupied (correct me if I'm wrong) the historical guardhouse building, built in 1762. This building has also been preserved; now it houses the Kobona recreation center:

In the school building, which also housed evacuees, two museums were opened after the war. The first museum was dedicated to the Road of Life. The second is about the life and work of the Kobona-born poet Alexander Prokofiev. This is what the building looked like a few years ago:

Unfortunately, in 2010 the house burned down. The main version of what happened is called arson, and people differ in their assessment of the reasons for the arson. Recently, a decision was made to restore the building and the museums in it, but work has not yet begun.

At the former entrance to the museum there is a monument to Alexander Prokofiev.

These days, Kobona and its surroundings are a popular destination for fishing enthusiasts. For them, there are two recreation centers in Kobona - “Kobona”, which was mentioned above, and “Jolly Roger”, a base located closer to the lake in a modern building.

I must say that both bases employ not just sympathetic people, but also enthusiasts interested in the history of the Road of Life. At the Jolly Roger base, a museum of the Road of Life is being created, which will display wartime items recovered from the bottom of Ladoga. Some of it can be seen today.

Here is a fragment of a museum map of Lake Ladoga indicating the places where cars lie at the bottom:

Among the objects raised from the bottom are many parts from the lorry. Unfortunately, the years have taken their toll, and only metal parts remained from the sunken trucks (and many parts of these cars were made of wood). It is no longer possible to lift an entire lorry from the bottom of Ladoga. But something from those cars has been preserved. By the way, when on the other side of the ice track, in Osinovets, the remains of one of the “one and a half” vehicles were raised, there was still pressure in one of its tires. It had the air of the siege.

The 35-kilometer railway line, along which evacuees from Kobona were transported inland, joined the main road near the Voibokalo station. Now Voybokalo is an ordinary workstation on the railway running from St. Petersburg towards Vologda and Murmansk, and only a small monument reminds that it was once an important railway junction where the Road of Life ended.

Then began the multi-day journey of the evacuees into the interior of the country. People were sent to different places. My grandmother and her mother (my great-grandmother) arrived in the Krasnodar region two weeks later. The path was difficult. From my grandmother’s stories, I especially remember a mother and a little boy. Mom died on the way, and the boy did not want to let her go. He pressed himself against her, and so they drove. At the stations, military personnel entered the carriage and took away the dead. But they were not told about the boy’s mother, and she remained in the carriage for several days. The entire history of the blockade and evacuation consists of thousands of such episodes.

The second blockade winter came, and the ice road opened again. But in parallel, another construction took place, surprising even against the backdrop of two transport hubs built in a matter of weeks. They began to build a railway bridge across Ladoga.

Or rather, two bridges - for a wide and a narrow railway gauge. The new railway was supposed to connect the Kobona and Lake Ladoga stations. Construction began on both sides: holes were punched in the ice through which piles were driven into the bottom. Cross members were laid on the piles, onto which the rails were attached.

On January 12, 1943, Soviet troops liberated Shlisselburg and part of the territories on the southern coast of Lake Ladoga. The blockade was broken, but not lifted: only a narrow corridor, no more than eleven kilometers wide, connecting Leningrad with the “mainland” was taken under control. In loudspeakers on Leningrad streets Olga Berggolts' voice sounded with good news.

With the breaking of the blockade, the need to complete the bridge across Ladoga disappeared. It was decided to use the liberated narrow corridor by building a railway inside it, connecting Petrokrepost and the main railway line in the area of Polyany station.

The 33-kilometer road, including two bridges across the Neva, was built in seventeen days. On the map below, although the actual proportions of the area are distorted, the new railway shown in red is clearly visible. It was called the “Road of Victory,” although due to its proximity to the front and constant shelling, it was also called the corridor of death.

For the same reason of proximity to the front, trains ran along Victory Road only at night. Every kilometer along the route there were “live semaphores” - girls with flashlights. They often died. In order to increase the road's capacity, trains were carried in caravans, and the direction of travel was changed once a day. One night the trains went to Leningrad, the next - from Leningrad.

One of the photographs depicts the arrival of the first train from the “mainland” to the Finland Station. It was a great joy: Leningrad was finally united with the rest of the country.

The locomotive that brought the first train to besieged Leningrad has been preserved and is now permanently parked at the Petrokrepost railway station. And in the station building there is a museum of the Road of Life. Some may think that there are too many Road of Life museums around Leningrad. But I will say that they do not duplicate, but organically complement each other; each of them reveals something new. And, of course, each of these museums is worthy of a visit.

Motor ships traveling along the Neva towards Ladoga cross the places where the Victory Road bridges were thrown across the river. By this moment, the attention of tourists on the decks is already absorbed by the Oreshek fortress that has appeared in direct visibility and the approaching Ladoga. It’s unlikely that anyone remembers the bridges, traces of which no longer remain, except for two memorial signs on the right bank in their former alignments.

One of the bridges had an unusual arched shape and a length of 1300 meters. It's hard to imagine, but it was built in just eleven days.

On January 27, 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was completely lifted. The Victory Road operated for another month and a half - until March 10, 1944, after which it was dismantled along with the bridges.

Many evacuees wanted to return to Leningrad after the blockade was lifted, but few succeeded: by unspoken order from the authorities, the return of evacuees to the city was not allowed. Most likely, there were two main reasons for this. Firstly, the active position of the managers of the enterprises where the evacuated Leningraders worked. Who will work if they leave, they asked. And the authorities met them halfway. The second reason is the lack of housing in Leningrad. Many houses were destroyed, and, in addition, the apartments of the evacuees were given to other people, which after the war caused many lawsuits on the part of those who managed to return to their hometown.

My grandmother and great-grandmother, when the Germans began to advance on the Krasnodar region, were evacuated again. They were brought to Stalingrad, from where they were sent by ship to Kazan. Perhaps they would have stayed there after the war, since they, like many Leningraders, were denied return home. But by some miracle they managed to get an appointment with the right boss, who, as an exception, allowed them to return to Leningrad. And they returned. Grandmother died in 1995.

This is the story about the Road of Life. My deepest respect to everyone who was involved in this huge undertaking. Without pathos I will say: well done, very well done. We were able to. Thank you!

In 1941 1942 this was the name of the road on the ice of Lake Ladoga, which connected Leningrad, blocked by German troops, with the “Mainland”, i.e. the rear. Food and ammunition were delivered to the city along this road, and they were taken out of the city along it... ... Dictionary of popular words and expressions

The only military strategic transport route that connected besieged Leningrad with the country in September 1941-March 1943 passed through Lake Ladoga. During navigation periods, transportation along the “D. and." were carried out along the water route... ... St. Petersburg (encyclopedia)

During the Great Patriotic War, the only transport route through Lake Ladoga. (during periods of navigation on water, in winter on ice), connecting from September 1941 to March 1943 blockaded Leningrad with the country ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

ROAD, and, f. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 … Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

During the Great Patriotic War, the only transport route across Lake Ladoga (during periods of navigation on water, in winter on ice), connecting blockaded Leningrad with the country in September 1941-March 1943. Source: Encyclopedia Oteche...Russian history

ROAD OF LIFE, during the Great Patriotic War, the only transport route across Lake Ladoga (during periods of navigation on water, in winter on ice), connecting blockaded Leningrad with the country from September 1941 to March 1943... encyclopedic Dictionary

A memorial kilometer sign on the Kushelevka Piskarevka railway section, near the Bogoslovskoe cemetery “Road of Life” during the Great Patriotic War, the only transport route across Lake Ladoga. During periods of navigation on water, ... ... Wikipedia

- (“Road of Life”), the only military strategic transport route across Lake Ladoga, connecting from September 1941 to March 1943 Leningrad, blocked by Nazi troops, with the rear regions of the country during the Great... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Books

Road of Life, Lindes Emma Category: Miscellaneous Publisher: Nestor-History, Manufacturer: Nestor-History,
The Road of Life, Lindes Emma, 1970. Former Cambridge graduate, handsome Conrad Helldorf returns to his native Berlin to find out the truth about his father, who died before his birth in the fall of 1944. Conrad’s new life... Category: Contemporary foreign prose Publisher:

Was connected to the country. Transportation along the road of life was carried out from September 12, 1941 to March 1943. During the navigation period, delivery was carried out on tugs with barges and ships, and in winter the vehicles traveled along the ice road.

During this period, over 1,600 thousand tons of cargo, mainly food, fodder and fuels and lubricants, were brought to the besieged city along the legendary Road of Life, which was officially listed as military highway No. 101. During the 500 days of the blockade (before it was broken), more than a million people were evacuated along the highway.

For reference: The Siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944, when it was completely lifted. The blockade ring was broken on January 18, 1943.

If you fly in a helicopter over Ladoga these days, you can see hundreds of dark rectangles under the water; these are the skeletons of trucks that went under the ice during the first and second blockade winters. Along with the vehicles that carried flour and shells, drivers and road workers often died.

Olga Berggolts wrote about the Road of Life:

Bread came to us along the road of life,
dear friendship of many to many.
They don't know on earth yet
scarier and more joyful than the road.

The road of life - how to get there

Most of the monuments are located along the modern A-128 highway, which is called the “Road of Life”. The most convenient way to get to all the monuments is by car, stopping at each of them (see map below).

You can also take the train to the Ladoga Lake station (departure from the Finlyandsky Station). In the village you can see the Road of Life Museum, the Osinovetsky lighthouse and the Esh-4375 steam locomotive (located right at the station). In addition, the village has a beautiful sandy beach, so in summer the excursion can be combined with swimming and sunbathing. Please note that in Lake Ladoga the water is clean, but always cold.

Road of life - map

From the history

On September 8, 1941, the Germans captured Shlisselburg and cut off all land routes and the waterway along the Neva. The blockade of Leningrad began and Ladoga became the only route connecting the city with the mainland.

On September 12, the delivery of goods to the besieged city began. Food was brought first to Volkhov, from there to Novaya Ladoga, and then transported on barges to the western bank to the Osinovets lighthouse.

In the fall of 1941, the ice on Ladoga did not form for a long time and barges walked along the lake, avoiding ice areas. The first sleigh train left on November 17, delivering 63 tons of flour to the city, and soon the movement of vehicles began. The ice was still very fragile and in order to prevent the transport from failing, part of the cargo was placed on sleighs, which reduced the pressure on the ice and made it possible to transport more products.

The movement was organized in both directions along two routes located at a distance of 100 - 150 meters from each other. The Germans constantly shelled and bombed the highway, but they failed to stop the movement. The truck drivers kept their doors open so they could jump out if the truck started to sink. In the first winter alone, about a thousand trucks went under the ice, and it is unknown how many people died here. In memory of the feat that ordinary people accomplished every day, on the shores of Lake Ladoga there is a bronze copy of the legendary GAZ-AA lorry.

Here is how the Leningrad poet Anatoly Molchanov wrote:

And somewhere on Ladoga, in the white expanse
Ice floes explode from bombs and frost,
And the engines howl, and the engines groan,
And they pull cars loaded with bread -
In a snowstorm and shelling, without sleep and peace,
We are responsible for the life and struggle of Leningrad.
And there was such traffic on the highway,
Just like in peacetime on Nevsky Prospekt.

Thanks to the delivery of food along the ice route, on December 25, 1941, people standing in line at bakeries suddenly learned that the bread quota had been increased by 75 grams. Children and women cried with happiness - it would seem that such a small piece of bread, but it gave them a chance to escape from starvation!

The population was evacuated along the Road of Life - first of all, women and children, the sick and the elderly were taken out.

During the first winter of the blockade, the ice route was in operation for 152 days until April 24, 1942. In April, during thaws, cars had to move on water.

During the first winter of the siege, more than 550 thousand Leningraders and more than 35 thousand wounded were evacuated from Leningrad, 361 thousand tons of various cargo were delivered to the city, including 262.5 thousand tons of food and about 32 thousand tons of ammunition
During the second navigation, more than 1 million tons of various cargoes were transported in both directions, and about 540 thousand people were evacuated from their cities.

On December 19, 1942, the ice route began to operate again, and already on January 18, 1943, Soviet troops liberated Shlisselburg, breaking through the Leningrad blockade. To deliver goods along the southern coast of Lake Ladoga, a railway was built to the Polyany station, later called the Victory Road.

But the Ladoga route continued to operate for almost another year, until the final lifting of the blockade of Leningrad on January 27, 1944.

Railway of life

There is a page in the history of the Road of Life that is not written about and people try to remember less.

In the second year of the siege of Leningrad, an attempt was made to build an ice railway, the Road of Life, which was supposed to connect the Kobona station on the eastern side of Ladoga with the Ladoga Lake station on the western side. The builders were given two months for all work.

At the same time, construction of a 35 km long wooden railway bridge, the so-called “pile-ice railway crossing”, began on the two shores of Lake Ladoga. At the same time, two tracks were built - a narrow-gauge railway and a regular-gauge track located 100-200 meters from it.

Builders, mostly women, cut holes and drove piles. The flooring was laid, and the railway track was mounted on top. The work went on in the cold and under enemy fire. In January 1943, when half of the track was built and work trains began to run along it, troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts broke the blockade of Leningrad.

The need for the route disappeared and all the efforts of the builders turned out to be meaningless. Perhaps for this reason they preferred to forget about this railway line.

Small Road of Life

The Small Road of Life began from the Bronka station, located near Oranienbaum (Lomonosov) and walked along the ice through Kronstadt to Lisiy Nos and Gorskaya. Residents of Oranienbaum and defenders of the city experienced the same difficulties as residents of Leningrad. They also starved, they also died of hunger.

In 1941, the bread distribution rate was reduced. But thanks to the action of the Small Road of Life, in January 1942 there was a slight increase in the rate of bread distribution, but despite this, in 1941-1942, 5,000 people died from hunger here.

Monuments on the Road of Life

In total, there are 7 monuments installed on the Road of Life, 46 memorial pillars along the highway and 56 pillars along the railway. All structures of the Road of Life are included in the Green Belt of Glory.

Flower of Life

The monument, located on the high bank of the small Lubya River, is made in the form of a white stone flower on a 10-meter stem, towering above the granite boulders. The words “May there always be sunshine” are carved into the petals of the flower. From the memorial, a 40-meter staircase and a birch alley of Friendship will lead you to a mound where stone sheets of the diary of Tanya Savicheva, a Leningrad pioneer schoolgirl who lost all her loved ones and survived the blockade winter of 1941 - 1942, are installed. Tanya Savicheva died in evacuation in July 1944, while in one of the orphanages in the Nizhny Novgorod region.

Broken ring

The monument is made in the form of two reinforced concrete arches 7 meters high, symbolizing the ring of the blockade, the gap between them is the Road of Life. Under the arches in the concrete you can see car tread marks. Nearby are two reinforced concrete balls simulating searchlights, as well as a 45 mm anti-aircraft gun.

Osinovetsky lighthouse

Lake Ladoga has a harsh character and in some places swimming is very dangerous. Ships never moored at the Osinovsky lighthouse - this was considered impossible, since not only was German artillery shelling taking place here, but the elements themselves were raging. On the night of September 16-17, during a storm, barges crashed in this place and more than 1,000 people died.

Ships sank, people died, but to save Leningrad, barges loaded with grain moored at the Osinovsky lighthouse.

Katyusha

The memorial is made in the form of five 14-meter steel beams, installed at an angle to the horizon and symbolizing the famous rocket launcher. On the low granite wall there is an inscription:

1941-1943 Remember these terrible years
The Road of Life passed here
Leningrad was saved by the courage of the brave
Immortal glory to the fallen heroes.

The Road of Life - this name fully corresponded to the role it played: without it, Leningrad would simply have perished.

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