For 872 days, the city of Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia), was surrounded and blockaded by Nazi German forces intent on systematically starving its population into extinction. Cut off from all utilities and food supplies during some of the coldest winters on record, citizens endured extreme starvation, resorting to eating wallpaper paste, leather, and eventually cannibalism, while facing daily artillery bombardments. Over one million civilians perished, yet the remaining population maintained an astonishing communal endurance, keeping factories running, clearing snow, and refusing to surrender the city in one of the most devastating sieges in human history.

The absolute horror and resilience of the blockade gave rise to a monumental body of Soviet poetry and literature, most famously exemplified by the radio broadcasts of Anna Akhmatova and Olga Bergholz, whose verses became the literal voice of the city's survival. Bergholz's famous line, 'No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten', was carved onto the memorial wall of the Piskaryovskoye Cemetery, demonstrating how poetry served as a vital tool for psychological endurance and collective historical memory.