The Kirov Plant Under the Shells

In early October 1941, Leningrad is encircled. The German armies of Army Group North, supported by the Finns, have cut all the overland routes linking the city to the rest of the USSR since 8 September. Only a thin lifeline across Lake Ladoga remains, under fire. Inside, nearly three million civilians are trapped, and the first food restrictions already foreshadow the famine that is looming with winter.

To the south of the city stands the immense Kirov Plant, the former Putilov works, one of the great industrial centres of the Red Army. But the front is now only a few kilometres away: the workshops, like the surrounding neighbourhoods, now labour within range of German artillery, under bombardment and power cuts. The authorities are seeking at once to sustain a war effort, to move certain equipment and certain teams to safety toward the Urals, and to fortify the threatened approaches to the city.

For the city's women and men workers, each day mixes the danger of the shells, the growing cold, and the rations that keep shrinking. The slogans multiply, sometimes contradictory, and everyone must decide what place they will hold in the defence of Leningrad. For a woman worker on the Kirov assembly lines, the hour of choice has come.