Corpses under siege

The siege of Leningrad (1941-44) involved nearly a million civilian deaths from starvation, making it one of the deadliest episodes of the Second World War. The corpse is a central, yet often overlooked, element of the history of the siege. This article examines the consequences of mass mortality, and the various forms of anthropological rupture that ensued from them. The authorities and municipal services were overwhelmed, resulting in the management of corpses passing into private hands, worsening treatment of dead bodies, and a proliferation of cadavers in the urban landscape and the daily lives of the besieged Leningraders. The article also investigates how this unprecedented situation was experienced and perceived, drawing on the diaries kept by exhausted civilians. To what extent do these sources counterbalance an official history that minimises or sublimates the topic of death itself? This article challenges the sanitised heroism often associated with the siege's official history, and initiates broader reflections on how societies negotiate trauma and the politics of remembering mass death

Negotiation · Politics · Siege · European history and politics · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies