www.executedtoday.com
City Leaders Were Arrested and Executed After the Siege
City leaders struggled throughout the siege to not only keep people alive but to keep the munitions factories going and to maintain some semblance of law and order. That was not enough to satisfy the KGB and the Red Army. They made excuses that some leaders did not contact Moscow often enough or that they betrayed the people of Leningrad. Some of these arrests and executions were hidden from the public, others occurred years later during the Leningrad affair.
The Leningrad Affair was an attempt by Stalin to consolidate power. The people of Leningrad were hailed as heroes after their ordeal during the war. They held off against impossible odds and spent nearly three years completely cut off from Moscow. Leningrad officials and communist party members were believed to be moving away from absolute loyalty to Stalin and the Soviet Union. Those closest to Stalin perpetuated those fears and therefore any sign that the Leningrad officials or communist party leaders were not in line with Stalin was viewed as a threat.
In 1949 a number of these officials were arrested on trumped up charges (Soviet leaders would later admit outright the charges were false) and after secret trials were sentenced to death. Some 2,000 other Leningrad party members were jailed or exiled. The museum that had been built to commemorate the siege was closed in the fear that it would bring about a party uprising against Stalin. It would not reopen until 40 years later. Some of the people that Stalin had killed or imprisoned were among the last of the high-ranking figures to be killed during Stalin’s reign when the aging dictator still feared any threat to his power.