Tanya Savicheva
Encyclopedia
Diary
A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...
who endured the Siege of Leningrad
Siege of Leningrad
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation resulting from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II. It started on 8 September 1941, when the last...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Early life
Born on January 23, 1930, she was the youngest child in the family of baker Nikolay Rodionovich Savichev and seamstress Mariya Ignatievna Savicheva. Her father died when Tanya was six, leaving Mariya Savicheva with five children — three girls, Tanya, Zhenya (Eugenia) and Nina and two boys, Mikhail and Leka (Leonid).The family planned to spend the summer of 1941 in the countryside, but the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
on June 22 disrupted their plans. All of them, except Mikhail (Misha), who had already left, decided to stay in Leningrad. Each of them worked to support the army: Mariya Ignatievna sewed uniform
Uniform
A uniform is a set of standard clothing worn by members of an organization while participating in that organization's activity. Modern uniforms are worn by armed forces and paramilitary organizations such as police, emergency services, security guards, in some workplaces and schools and by inmates...
s, Leka worked as a planner at the Admiralty Plant, Zhenya worked at the munitions
Ammunition
Ammunition is a generic term derived from the French language la munition which embraced all material used for war , but which in time came to refer specifically to gunpowder and artillery. The collective term for all types of ammunition is munitions...
factory, Nina worked at the construction of city defences, and Uncle Vasya and Uncle Lesha served in the anti-aircraft defence. Tanya, then 11 years old, dug trenches
Trench warfare
Trench warfare is a form of occupied fighting lines, consisting largely of trenches, in which troops are largely immune to the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery...
and put out firebombs
Incendiary device
Incendiary weapons, incendiary devices or incendiary bombs are bombs designed to start fires or destroy sensitive equipment using materials such as napalm, thermite, chlorine trifluoride, or white phosphorus....
.
One day Nina went to work and never came back; she was sent to Lake Ladoga
Lake Ladoga
Lake Ladoga is a freshwater lake located in the Republic of Karelia and Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia, not far from Saint Petersburg. It is the largest lake in Europe, and the 14th largest lake by area in the world.-Geography:...
and then urgently evacuated. The family was unaware of this and thought she had died.
Origins of the diary
After a few days in memory of Nina, Mariya Ignatievna gave to Tanya a small notebook that belonged to her sister and that would later become Tanya's diary. Tanya had a real diary once, a thick notebook where she recorded everything important in her life. She burned it when nothing was left to heat the stoveStove
A stove is an enclosed heated space. The term is commonly taken to mean an enclosed space in which fuel is burned to provide heating, either to heat the space in which the stove is situated or to heat the stove itself, and items placed on it...
in winter, but she spared her sister's notebook.
The first record in it appeared on December 28. Each day Zhenya got up when it was still dark outside. She walked seven kilometers to the plant, where she worked for two shifts every day making mine
Land mine
A land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....
cases. After the work she would donate blood
Blood donation
A blood donation occurs when a person voluntarily has blood drawn and used for transfusions or made into medications by a process called fractionation....
. Her weakened body could not endure. She died at the plant where she worked. Then grandmother Evdokiya Grigorievna died. Then Tanya's brother Leka. Then, one after another, Uncle Vasya and Uncle Lesha died. Her mother was the last. That time Tanya probably browsed through the pages and added her final remark.
In August 1942, Tanya was one of the 140 children who were rescued from Leningrad and brought to the village of Krasny Bor
Krasny Bor, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast
Krasny Bor is a village in Shatkovsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia, located about 17 km south-east from Arzamas.Tanya Savicheva was buried there in 1944. In 1972 a stela with the bas-relief of the girl and pages from her diary was built on Tanya's grave for means earned by Young...
. All of them survived, except Tanya. Anastasiya Karpova, a teacher in the Krasny Bor orphanage, wrote to Tanya's brother Mikhail, who happened to be outside of Leningrad in 1941: "Tanya is now alive, but she doesn't look healthy. A doctor, who visited her recently, says she is very ill. She needs rest, special care, nutrition, better climate and, most of all, tender motherly care". In May 1944, Tanya was sent to Shatkovsky hospital, where she died a month later, on July 1, of intestinal tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
.
During the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
, one of the documents presented by the Allied prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
s allegedly was the small notebook that once belonged to Tanya, although this fact is debatable. The argument against it is that if the diary had been really presented at the Nuremberg Trials, it would have never left the court archives.
Nina Savicheva and Mikhail Savichev returned to Leningrad after the war
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. The diary of Tanya Savicheva is now displayed at the Museum of Leningrad History and a copy is displayed at the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery.
Contents of the diary
Legacy
Tanya and her diary have become an iconic image of the victims of the siege of Leningrad in the postwar Soviet Union. In May 1972, a memorialMemorial
A memorial is an object which serves as a focus for memory of something, usually a person or an event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or art objects such as sculptures, statues or fountains, and even entire parks....
was constructed in her honor in Shatki, which was later expanded to a memorial complex.
2127 Tanya
2127 Tanya
2127 Tanya is a main belt asteroid, discovered by Lyudmila Ivanovna Chernykh on May 29, 1971. She named her discovery in memory of the young Russian girl Tanya Savicheva, who died after the Siege of Leningrad and wrote a well-known diary.Orbital Information:...
, a minor planet
Minor planet
An asteroid group or minor-planet group is a population of minor planets that have a share broadly similar orbits. Members are generally unrelated to each other, unlike in an asteroid family, which often results from the break-up of a single asteroid...
discovered in 1971 by Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh
Lyudmila Chernykh
Lyudmila Ivanovna Chernykh is a Russian, Ukrainian and Soviet astronomer.In 1959 she graduated from Irkutsk State Pedagogical University. Between 1959 and 1963 she worked in the 'Time and Frequency Laboratory' of the All-Union Research Institute of Physico-Technical and Radiotechnical Measurements...
, is named in her honor.