Harrison
E. Salisbury was born in Minneapolis on 14th November,
1908. While studying chemistry at the University of Minnesota he edited
the campus newspaper. He also did work for the local Minneapolis
Journal.
After
leaving university Salisbury was employed by United Press. He worked
in Chicago, Washington
and New York before being sent to London
in 1942 to cover the Second World War.
Salisbury
went to the Soviet Union in 1944 and accompanied
the Red Army in its victories against the
retreating German
Army during
the final stages of the war.
In
1945 Salisbury returned to the United States
and wrote a series of articles on the war for Collier's
Weekly.
This material was later published as a book entitled Russia
on the Way (1946).
Salisbury
joined the New
York Times and
in 1949 became the newspaper's Russian correspondent. His reports
were criticised by Joseph
McCarthy and
his supporters as being sympathetic to communism. Despite these attacks
Salisbury won the 1955 Pulitzer
Prize for
international reporting.
In
1960 Salisbury was sent to cover the Civil
Rights struggle in the South. His articles upset local politicians
and resulted in a $6 million libel suit against the New
York Times.
The case was resolved in favour of the newspaper in 1964.
Salusbury
wrote a large number of books of books on international politics including
Moscow Journal The End of Stalin
(1961), The Kingdom and the Power
(1966), Behind the Lines (1967),
Orbit of China (1967), 900
Days: The Siege of Leningrad (1969) and War
Between Russia and China (1969).
In
1972 Salisbury was promoted to associate editor of the New
York Times.
He retired from the newspaper the following year to concentrate on
writing books. This included Black Night
White Snow (1978), Russia in Revolution
(1979), Without Fear or Favor
(1980), One Hundred Years of Revolution
(1983), A Journey for Our Times A Memoir
(1983), The Long March: The Untold Story
(1985), Tianamen Diary: Thirteen Days in
June (1988), A Time of Change
(1988) and Heroes of My Time (1993).
Harrison
E. Salisbury
died in 1993.
(1)
Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad
(1969)
Each passing year deepens our realization of the triumph of man's
spirit marked by the survival of the great city of Leningrad under
the 900-day siege
imposed by Hitler's legions in World War II.
Nothing can diminish the
achievement of the men and women who fought on despite
hunger, cold, disease, bombs, shells, lack of heat or transportation
in a city that seemed
given over to death. The story of those days is an epic which will
stir human hearts
as long as mankind exists on earth.
This narrative has itself
come to play a role in the Leningrad drama. Published on
the 25th anniversary of the lifting of the siege, it has been printed
in translation in
almost every country around the world. It has been hailed in America
in Europe, and in
Asia for its celebration of the extraordinary heroism of the people
of Leningrad, whose
conduct shines like a beacon in a world which is often murky and
not precisely heroic.
Only in one great country
has The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad not been published.
That country is the Soviet Union. True, a Russian-language paperback
edition was published-but in the United States. True, there are few
citizens of Leningrad who are not aware of
The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad and tens of thousands
of them have read its words and treasure them.
Nowhere has The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad been read
more avidly and with deeper insight and appreciation than in Leningrad.
But it has not been published there Instead it was instantly attacked
by the official Soviet propaganda agencies. Pravda published a full-page
attack, charging that The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad
besmirched the heroism of Leningrad and demeaned the role of the Communist
Party in the city's defense It
was, Pravda declared, one more volley in America's cold-war attack
on the Soviet.
(2)
Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad
(1969)
By the second week of September Von Leeb's Army Group Nord was driving
on Leningrad for the kill. He had moved so
headquarters up to Gatchina, and from this front-line observation
post he got a fine view of the city. All the grandiose architectural
ensembles built by Peter and Catherine and the later Romanovs lay
spread before him like a panorama - St. Isaac's, the Admiralty spire,
the Fortress of Peter and Paul. The dive-bombing and the great fires
started by the 240-mm siege guns near Tosno could be followed with
clarity. Von Leeb felt victory within his grasp. The Fuhrer seemed
pleased and graciously honored him with awards and congratulations
on his sixty-fifth birthday. The aging Field Marshal had every reason
to believe that he was on the verge of a success which would crown
his earlier achievements in breaking the Maginot Line and occupying
the Sudeten. Once Leningrad had been captured, he could look forward
to pleasant retirement on his East Prussian estates, basking in glory.
(3)
Harrison E. Salisbury, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad
(1969)
Some years after the war Orbeli wrote a brief essay which he called
"About What I Thought During the Days and Nights of the Leningrad
Blockade."
His thoughts were down-to-earth:
of the thousands of treasures of the Hermitage which lay still in
the chambers and cellars, subject to damage from German bombs and
shells; of the safety of the priceless works of art sent to the Urals;
of his native Armenia and the lands of the Caucasus where he spent
his youth, and of the scholars of Leningrad and their dedication to
science; of his last conversation with Zhebelev, "of his words,
of all the thoughts which he then shared with me, of the great strength
of the human spirit, the spirit of a man who in the course of his
whole life fulfilled his duty
unswervingly - the duty of a scholar, a teacher, a citizen."
The life of the Hermitage
now descended to the subterranean chambers. Bomb Shelter No. 3, one
of twelve in the great vaults under the palace, was the center of
activity. Here people lived, worked, studied and died in darkness
under the low ceilings. Here were their cots, row after row; here
the plank tables where they huddled, swathed in greatcoats, a tiny
"bat" light or candle stub flickering over the books of
the scholars, the thin scratch of pens on yellow paper, the ink so
close to freezing it had to be warmed by their
breath. These were the catacombs - the center, such as it could be,
of Leningrad's scholarly life. Here people worked until they died.
Each day a few more were dead. With the civilian ration down to 125
grams a day (all the Hermitage was on this minimum ration), Orbeli
had found one unexpected resource - the by-product of the interminable
delay of the painters, the fierce
wrangling in which he had been engaged at the time war broke out.
In preparation for the
redecorating a quantity of linseed oil had been purchased
for the Hermitage stores. There was also a large supply of paste.
These products were
edible. The linseed oil was used to fry bits of frozen potatoes,
dug out of garden patches on the edge of the city. The paste was used
to make a kind of "meat" jelly which became the stand-by
of the Hermitage
diet.
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