Aleksandr Sokolov
Dosoga Jhizni

The gallery is unexpectedly crowded. Yet, looking at it, it's not that beautiful. A bit uncertain brushstrokes, perhaps applied to the canvas in a distracted manner, like weak and tired stabs. Paradoxically, the colors are not cold. There's snow, a lot of snow mixed with dark patches. The colors are dead. Even despite the title of the work. Road of Life.

A deceased human nature that manages to capture the gaze of visitors. Despite the bustling of curious people, the gallery is cold. If you try hard to sharpen your imagination, that painting full of inanimate patches seems to express itself. The dull, almost suspicious gaze of an armed lioness seems to invite you to pay attention. The other patch wrapped in a gray suit peers at the horizon. Maybe it's a man. A sinister black cloud squeezes the sky, producing smudges of the same color that dive into the snow. They are heavy iron trucks.

The sky seems glued there by chance, as if the author had forgotten it in an attempt at a chromatic elaboration. The patches in the snow are the most detailed. Carved with precision, with care and delicacy, as if there were some suspicious watching eye around. Painted almost without being noticed. And the Germans shouldn't have noticed...

You sense a cold tongue clutching your soles resting on the marble floor. It feels like walking with feet veiled by thin stockings. Insufficient to protect you from hellish temperatures. Below zero.

In the winter of 1941, at the height of the Unternehmen Barbarossa, Leningrad was already a city under siege. On September 8, Nazi troops advanced towards the capital of the north, with the aim of erasing it from the maps. But that winter, Lenin's city was tormented by events hard to imagine. The iron silence was interrupted by the cyclical bombardments of heavy German cannons: in the morning from 8 to 9, from 11 to 12, and in the afternoon from 17 to 18 and from 20 to 22. The pauses were covered by Stukas targeting fuel depots, food silos, and rail lines. With terrifying precision, during those time frames, grenades rained down daily. On many walls of the city was the inscription "Grazhdane! Opasna eta storona! - Citizens! This side is dangerous!" which invited people not to approach as they were potentially exposed to enemy artillery.

Soon began the harsh season of rationing. Electricity, water, telephone lines. Ration cards guaranteed soldiers 250 grams of bread a day and civilians 125. Per person. Deaths from arbitrary starvation were thousands. Forgotten under heaps of snow. Many were deprived of burial because even the gravediggers had died. Mothers let themselves die to feed their children. Desperate thefts of ration cards. Many in despair ate corpses. Despite everything, however, Leningrad lived. With unimaginable efforts but it lived. In factories, workshops, shops, offices, schools, and hospitals. Those remaining. Dmitry Shostakovich composed the VII Symphony "Leningrad" under the roar of bombs. It was performed for the first time in August 1942 even though the members of the orchestra from six months earlier had almost all disappeared to the front.

The only desperate salvation for the city was Lake Ladoga stretching northeast. It had to be exploited for supplies, as sheltered as possible from relentless German attacks. Thus was born the famous "Road of Life," with the contribution of everyone. It was waited until November 1942 when the temperatures allowed the lake to freeze. Members of the Military Committee, with the help of local fishermen, probed the areas where the ice was more consistent, leaving recognition signs like Hansel and Gretel. By mid-November, the thickness, quite slender at 17-18 cm, could hardly support the weight of a horse loaded with supplies. General Winter showed compassion by further hardening the temperatures in a few days and funneling icy winds towards the area. 28 degrees below zero. The works lasted a week, under the weight of the bombs. On November 20, 1942, the first horse-drawn sleds traveled the road paved with ice blocks from Osinovets to Kabona, then continued beyond the German front from Tivkin to Zaborje. Over 40 km. Then from there to Leningrad by railway for another 320 km. As if that were not enough, even on this occasion not everything went well. It happened that the ice was softer, creating chasms under the fearful steps of people. Many were swallowed by sudden cracks. On December 24, the thicker ice, almost a meter, and a temperature of 32 degrees below zero allowed the crossing even by motor vehicles. One can imagine the people weeping with emotion when they saw, on the shelves of food shops, 300 grams of bread and some pieces of meat. For four months, 2000 tons of all kinds of supplies arrived daily in Leningrad, and 1,700,000 exhausted citizens were evacuated via trucks and light tracked vehicles of the Red Army.

The subsequent melting of the ice in April 1943 permitted naval passage, multiplying supplies to 150,000 tons daily. Yet, people continued to die from hardships. One could lose life even from a too-deep breath or an accelerated heartbeat. The time also came for the Soviet offensive that managed to resist the closure of the Nazi pincer up to the last counterattack launched on January 13, 1944, under the incredible energy of the units commanded by Marshal Zhukov. The Germans were forced to retreat on the 27th, the day of the city's liberation after almost 900 days of siege!

Among civilians and military personnel, there were about 2,400,000 dead. Leningrad was honored as a hero city of the Great Patriotic War.

The fiery eyes still stare at the canvas as a voluntary tear descends to comfort them. The floor seems to have warmed up, and the gallery is now empty. The breath is nervous and occasionally broken by a solid cough. The woman may have lowered her gaze, and the colors seem revived. No one knows that painting, but a glance is enough to feel it speak. A forced smile. A barely concealed grimace of pain. A bit of blood left traces those bony hands. A pinch of vigor. Ephemeral. The time necessary to raise the left fist towards the sky and clench the teeth.

Tightly clenched.