I just got done reading--clear to the end--The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad (Harrison Salisbury, 1969, Harper & Row). I've had this very long book for years and years and years, but despite that I'm no slacker when it comes to reading long books, I could never finish this one.
Well, afte 20+ years of trying, I finally read it to the last page.
Harrison Salisbury was a reporter for the New York Times; not a historian, not a military expert. He was the guy who went to Hanoi, North Vietnam, during that war and wrote despatches glorifying the endeavors of Uncle Ho trying to build a socialist paradise of workers and peasants, while most conveniently for his own ideological viewpoint, omitting to mention the ugly stuff, even in passing.
Salisbury for years, for decades, reported on the Soviet Union, another paradise he appears to have admired much. He was one of the first western reporters allowed into Leningrad after the siege was lifted in 1944.
I'll get to the bad points in a moment; but first the stellar sterling good point.
Near the beginning of the book, Salisbury describes the refusal of Joseph Stalin to take the threat of the Germans and war seriously. Most people know Stalin did not take the matter seriously, but Salisbury explains in great detail what was going on, and after reading that one particular chapter, perhaps most would understand better how unseriously Stalin took it. It can boggle the imagination, reel the mind, the extent to which Stalin ignored all.
It bears a remarkable resemblence to the attitude of the current occupant of the White House towards the War on Terror.
That one single chapter alone makes the book well worth having, but the other 95% of the pages are trivialities, no information of substance in them.
My major gripe is the survivors of the siege, with whom Salisbury spoke, or exchanged written correspondence. Of course, this being a socialist paradise, the reporter could not freely pick-and-choose those he wished to interview; he could interview only those "pre-approved" by the socialists.
And so the book is utterly out of equilibrium; most of those whom Salisbury interviewed (or with whom he exchanged letters) were of the "artsy" class; the writers, the poets, the artists, the "intelligentsia"--only one of whom in the western world is considered as high as fifth-rate.
Of course, the socialists told Salisbury with whom he could communicate, but one also senses that to the reporter, this was less irksome to him, than it would be to any other person. These were his type of people, his crowd.
The sufferings and deprivations of the "artsy" class in Leningrad during the siege were almost unspeakable, and one must consider them heroes for that--but something is absent in the book. The sufferings and deprivations of the workers, the peasants, and the ordinary soldiers were far worse than that endured by the "artisies," but those calamities merited hardly half a paragraph by the writer.
One is embarrassed by the elitism of the reporter, the writer, as those enamoured of socialism aren't supposed to be that way.
