title: Conversations, Dreams and Desires of the Inhabitants of Besieged Leningrad. 1941–1944
metadata.name: dc.contributor.author
metadata.value: Piankevich, V. L.
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.accessioned
metadata.value: 2023-10-12T12:46:54Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.available
metadata.value: 2023-10-12T12:46:54Z
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.date.issued
metadata.value: 2023-09
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.citation
metadata.value: Piankevich V. L. ‘Conversations, Dreams and Desires of the Inhabitants of Besieged Leningrad. 1941–1944’, Modern History of Russia, vol. 13, no. 3, 2023, pp. 569–583. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.303 (In Russian)
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.identifier.other
metadata.value: https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.303
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.identifier.uri
metadata.value: http://hdl.handle.net/11701/44226
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.description.abstract
metadata.value: The author explores non-classical sources on the social history of besieged Leningrad — conversations,
  dreams and desires of the inhabitants of the city. Conversations, dreams and desires testify what is passionately
  desired, illusory and at the same time the most important for people. In relation to the history of the
  Siege of Leningrad, this has a special meaning, since it is a study of the fears, aspirations and hopes of a person
  in a catastrophe. The sources of studying of such specific forms of communication and auto-communication are
  reflections recorded in diaries, letters, memoirs, interviews. The author concludes that the dreams and desires of
  the inhabitants of besieged Leningrad, often remaining unfulfilled, reflected obvious and secret thoughts, fears,
  aspirations. Leningraders often told each other about their dreams, which were a bright moment of salvation to
  overcome the aching loneliness and stress. Thinking, speaking, dreaming about food, many have experienced or
  deliberately aroused in themselves a blissful, ecstatic state, returning with incredible pain to a deadly hungry reality.
  Men, women, children, people of different levels of education and culture were prone to daydreaming. The
  blockade present was so unbearable that the imagination painted a picture of well-being, comfort, satiety, peace
  in the past, which was experienced, familiar and sometimes seemed more real than the present and the future.
  The danger, often the practical impossibility of evacuation, transferred the physical movement to the space of
  sleep and dreams, where only the blockade could “act”. Such escapism allowed a person to escape the tyranny
  of blockaded reality. A very personal, private space which is a dream with the beginning of the war and especially
  the blockade, shrank to a very limited circle, the main ones in which were the lifting of the blockade and food.
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.language.iso
metadata.value: ru
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.publisher
metadata.value: St Petersburg State University
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.relation.ispartofseries
metadata.value: Modern History of Russia;Volume 13; Issue 3
metadata.lang: -
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Blockade
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: Leningrad
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: social history
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: war
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: diaries
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: conversations
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: dreams
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.subject
metadata.value: dreamings
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.title
metadata.value: Conversations, Dreams and Desires of the Inhabitants of Besieged Leningrad. 1941–1944
metadata.lang: en_GB
metadata.name: dc.type
metadata.value: Article
metadata.lang: en_GB
resources.filename: 03_piankevich.pdf
resources.url: https://dspace.spbu.ru/bitstream/11701/44226/1/03_piankevich.pdf
resources.format: Adobe PDF
resources.size: 790,56 kB