During the war, he volunteered for active service but was turned down because of his poor eyesight; but in the 1941 siege of Leningrad by the Nazis, Shostakovich served in the fire brigade before ...

The banks of the Neva River in Leningrad (today’s St. Petersburg) in 1979. Children in Vologda in 1979. Masha Ivashintsova was born into an aristocratic family whose assets, including a ...

Today is a special day. Eighty-one years ago, on 27 January 1944, the most terrible blockade in the history of mankind - the siege of Leningrad (modern-day St. Petersburg) - ended. Its importance can ...

A boy poses with a Kalashnikov gun at a weapon and military equipment exhibition during celebration of the 81st anniversary ...

TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to attend the events in St Petersburg devoted to the 75th anniversary since the breakup of the Siege of Leningrad in 1943, the Kremlin press ...

In this short film Howard Goodall looks at how musicians such as Dmitri Shostakovich and Richard ... hope in the midst of the horrifying siege of Leningrad during World War Two.