Not a few factory bosses deserted their posts, as witnessed by a stream of reprimands and dismissals for ‘showing cowardice’, ‘giving way to panic’, misappropriation of funds and going absent without leave. In a memorandum to industrial managers of 5 September, Zhdanov complained of a rise in theft and embezzlement, as well as of jobsworth demands for overtime pay. The most prominent delinquent was the director of the large ‘Red Chemist’ plant, who ordered his bookkeeper to withdraw fifty thousand roubles, requisitioned a car and would have made good his escape had the bookkeeper not alerted the authorities.18 Others, like First Party Secretary Nikonorov of Lodeinoye Pole, a small town east of Ladoga, drowned fear in drink. Instead of mobilising civilian resistance at the Wehrmacht’s approach, a purse-lipped investigator noted, he ‘occupied himself with the organisation of mass drunkenness, involving leading workers. . Amongst the district police, drinking and card games flourished, chief of police Martynov personally taking part.’19 By the end of the year 1,540 city officials ‘unworthy of the high title of Member of the Bolshevik Party’ had been stripped of their Party cards.20
At the same time, general security measures were tightened even further, the one which affected ordinary people most being the disconnection of domestic telephones. ‘It gave me a strange feeling’, wrote Vera Inber,
when the phone rang, and a fresh young voice said, ‘The telephone is disconnected until the end of the war’, I tried to raise a protest, but knew in my heart that it was useless. In a few minutes the phone clicked and went dead. . until the end of the war. And immediately the flat felt dead, frozen, tense. We are cut off from everyone and everything in the city. . Only very special offices, clinics and hospitals are excepted.21
Checkpoints multiplied, and the streets on to which Nazi propaganda leaflets fluttered down were quickly cordoned off. (‘We come not as your enemies, but as enemies of Bolshevism!’ ran one. ‘If your factories and storehouses burn, you will die of hunger! If your houses burn, you will die of cold!’) There were also new round-ups (3,566 detentions between 13 and 17 September) of Red Army and
The guards stood in two rows on the deck, driving a stream of prisoners down the steps into the hold. In the dark void a small flame flickered: a lieutenant stood there, vomiting swear words right and left as he hit out with a croquet mallet, trying to pack everyone in as tightly as possible. People stood squashed together, clutching their belongings. A long line of prisoners came down after me.
By evening the hold had been packed full. It consisted of three compartments: one for men, holding about 3,000 people, one for women, of whom there were about 800, and a small corner into which were squashed two hundred German prisoners of war. . From time to time a gasping prisoner would try to climb a little way up the steps, so as to gulp some fresh air. Shots would swiftly follow, and the unfortunate, having swallowed lead along with air, would tumble back down again. .
A metal hundred-litre barrel was lowered on a rope down through the hatch. A mass of prisoners immediately rushed towards it. Most had nothing to scoop up the water with, so they used their hands.
[As the night progressed] conditions got even worse. To start with we had been pressed tight, but at least it had been possible to stand on the floor. Now there was more space, but the floor had disappeared beneath a layer of corpses, on which it was hard to avoid standing or sitting. It was also starting to smell. . When I left the hold I looked around: the floor had completely disappeared under a thick layer of decomposing dead.23
