Nonetheless, Leningrad’s experience was at least as significant in showing why the Soviet Union prevailed in the Second World War. It is unthinkable that British people would have eaten one another rather than surrender London or Birmingham—or would have been obliged by their generals and politicians to hold out at such a cost. Compulsion was a key element in Leningrad’s survival, as in that of Stalin’s nation. If the city’s inhabitants had been offered an exchange of surrender for food in February 1942, they assuredly would have given up. But in the Soviet Union no such choice was available,
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