Mom tells me that now is not the time to keep a diary, but I will keep one.

I don't have to reread it, someone else will reread it, find out what kind of person

Yuri Rehabinkin was, and laugh at this person, or maybe the boy never existed.

The popular riddle asks, what is the shortest thing in the

world? And the answer is, human life. Excerpt from the diary of Yuri Ria Binkin. Welcome to the history

of the 20th century. Episode 406, The Siege of Leningrad, Part 1.

I've devoted many episodes to discussion of the events on the Eastern Front,

beginning with Operation Barbarossa and continuing through to the Battle of Kursk in mid-1943.

While all this was going on, the city of Leningrad, at the northern end of the German front line,

was under a continuing siege.

Today, we're going to talk about what happened to Leningrad.

In the days when it was called St. Petersburg, the city served as the capital of the Russian Empire

for just over 200 years, from 1712 to 1918.

Shortly after the First World War began, the city was renamed Petrograd.

In 1917, Petrograd served as the cradle of both the February Revolution and the October

Revolution.

The government of the New Soviet Union moved its capital to Moscow in early 1918,

because the German army was advancing into Russia.

Lenin directed the government be moved to a safer location.

There was always a certain rivalry between St. Petersburg and Moscow, during the period when the former was the Russian capital.

In St. Petersburg, citizens took it as a given that their city was better educated, cleaner, more modern, and more cultured.

It was the home of beautiful palaces, of arts and music, and of schools and

...