These photographs capture post-war Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, from 1946 to 1950, revealing the lives of everyday Soviet citizens amidst the city’s profound efforts to rebuild.
Scenes range from laborers restoring St. Isaac’s Cathedral to a woman carefully polishing a display piece in the Hermitage Museum.
Though the war had ended, Leningrad lay in ruins. Years of relentless air raids, shelling, and fires had devastated the city’s infrastructure—destroying or damaging countless homes, factories, schools, hospitals, power plants, and roads.
Over a million civilians had succumbed to starvation, freezing temperatures, and disease, while another million had been evacuated.
The responsibility of restoring the city fell to the remaining 600,000 survivors, many of whom were severely weakened and emaciated.
Part of the recovery included the heartbreaking task of burying the blockade’s numerous victims.
Nearly half a million people were interred in 186 mass graves at Piskarevsky Memorial Cemetery, which during the war had been a massive pit where bodies were hastily laid to rest.
The poet Sergei Davydov poignantly summarized this immense loss, writing, “Here lies half the city.”
Restoration of cultural institutions also began, including the Hermitage Museum, which had suffered significant damage.
By the time of the Nazi invasion, museum staff and volunteers had packed and evacuated over a million artifacts on two freight trains bound for Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains, securing them in the Ipatiev House—the same building where the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family had been executed in 1918.
In October 1945, these treasures returned to Leningrad, and by November 4, the museum had reopened sixty-nine of its halls to the public.
The Hermitage story is emblematic of the spirit of regeneration that gripped the city itself. Facades were renovated, streets repaved, and parks replanted. By 1950, Leningrad had been resurrected.
In the late 1940s to early 1950s, the political climate in post-war Leningrad took a dark turn due to Stalin’s reputed jealousy of the city’s leaders.
This suspicion led to a series of politically charged show trials, known as the Leningrad Affair, which targeted prominent officials who had played key roles during the war.
Like the earlier pre-war purge that followed the 1934 assassination of Leningrad’s popular leader Sergey Kirov, this wave of repression decimated another generation of the city’s government and Communist Party officials.
These individuals were accused of exaggerating both Leningrad’s strategic importance and their own contributions to its wartime defense.
In the purge’s aftermath, the Leningrad Defence Museum—created to commemorate the city’s heroic resistance—was also dismantled, and countless valuable exhibits were destroyed.
The museum was eventually revived in the late 1980s, during the glasnost era, which promoted openness and transparency in Soviet society.
New evidence emerged, shedding light on previously hidden aspects of the city’s wartime experience.
The siege of Leningrad was a prolonged and devastating military blockade imposed by the Axis powers on the Soviet city of Leningrad.
Germany’s Army Group North advanced from the south, while the Finnish army, allied with Germany, approached from the north, ultimately encircling the city.
The siege formally began on September 8, 1941, when the Wehrmacht cut off the last road leading into Leningrad.
Although Soviet forces managed to break a narrow land corridor to the city on January 18, 1943, the full siege persisted until January 27, 1944, lasting a brutal 872 days.
It remains one of history’s longest and most destructive sieges, inflicting severe suffering on the civilian population. Approximately 1.5 million people died due to starvation, exposure, and relentless shelling.
While the siege was not deemed a war crime at the time, some modern historians classify it as a form of genocide, citing the deliberate destruction of the city and the systematic starvation of its residents as intentional acts against the civilian population.
(Photo credit: The Moscow Times / Harvard Archives / Enhanced by RHP).