“BLOCK-HAD”, with an unusual spelling of a word sadly familiar to every Leningrader, the author informs that the reader will be presented with only a “piece” of hell into which the City was plunged during the war. The fate of one family, a city dweller, a Red Army soldier, a child, an elderly woman and the fate of the City are presented in a tragic and heroic interweaving. I am a Leningrader myself. Mikhail Kuraev, talking about the people he knew, whose confessions sunk into his soul, asserts with his narration: this City has gathered and raised a special breed of people, not ostentatious courage, spiritual nobility, civic inflexibility. Only they, who did not think of enslavement by the enemy either for themselves or for the City of Captivity, could withstand the most difficult and seemingly hopeless time.