The proposed publication of documents from the Central State Archives of St. Petersburg is the first specific publication of materials from the executive committee of the Leningrad City Council for 1941–1942. Recordings of speeches by Soviet leaders make it possible to show not only the tragedy of the first winter of the siege, but also the intense, sometimes desperate struggle for the restoration and preservation of urban infrastructure, on which the lives of hundreds of thousands of Leningraders depended. At the same time, the published documents allow us to re-imagine and evaluate the current work of the city government during an extreme period in the history of the great city.