Elena Mukhina

Elena Vladimirovna Mukhina was a Leningrad schoolgirl at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War and the author of “Lena Mukhina’s Blockade Diary.”

Elena Mukhina was born in Ufa. In the early 1930s, she moved to Leningrad with her mother. When her mother fell ill and died, she was adopted by her aunt, Elena Nikolayevna Bernatskaya, who at that time worked as a ballerina at the Leningrad Small Opera Theatre. After falling from a horse (she was fond of equestrian sports), Bernatskaya was forced to change professions and work as an artist in the model workshop of the same theater. Lena Mukhina lived with her adoptive mother at No. 26 Zagorodny Prospekt. Lena Mukhina studied at School No. 30. In May 1941, Lena began keeping a diary in Bernatskaya’s notebook. With the start of the Great Patriotic War, the diary entries were upbeat, but later, especially in connection with the blockade of Leningrad, their tone changed. They openly and in detail described life in the besieged city: shelling and bombing, tiny bread rations, aspic made from carpenter’s glue, and the deaths of loved ones. On 7 February 1942, her adoptive mother also died.

8/II Yesterday morning Mama died. I was left alone.

The last entry in the diary is dated 25 May 1942:

Today is already 25 May. In a few days I will leave. Today the first echelon is going. Kisa said it was not impossible that I might leave tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. But I have become so weak that everything is indifferent to me. My brain no longer reacts to anything; I live as if in a half-sleep. Day by day I grow weaker and weaker, the remnants of my strength are ebbing away hour by hour. A complete lack of energy. Even the news of my imminent departure makes no impression on me. Honestly, it is downright funny, because I am not some cripple, not an old man or old woman; I am a young girl with everything ahead of