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Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina. Writing the Siege of Leningrad: Women's Diaries, Memoirs and Documentary Prose. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2002. 242 pp. ISBN 0-8229-4183-X, $29.00.
Minting the Siege of Leningrad is a welcome addition to the growing body of work on World War II in the Soviet Union. General histories of the war often pass lightly over the Leningrad experience because it does not fit easily into the categories we usually employ when examining war. There was no street fighting in Leningrad, industry continued to operate, and schools remained open for much of the period-clearly, Leningrad was not "the front." At the same time, the city was constantly bombed, supplies were cut off for months at a time, and people dropped dead on the street from starvation-Leningrad was hardly "the rear" or "the homefront." More than anything else, the experiences in this book resemble those in a concentration camp: although there was much less control over daily activities of the inmates, the inhabitants were trapped, rations were uncertain at best, and there was little provision to care for the sick, elderly, or dying.
This work will prove useful and interesting on a number of levels. The translations provide valuable material for research on...