“...And Think About the Beauty of Your Nails”: Manicure in the Military Everyday Life of Leningrad Residents (1941–1945)

The article deals with the issues of everyday life of Leningrad residents during the Great Patriotic War. The questions of activity of public service enterprises of the besieged city, the practice of hand care, the work of manicure masters are covered. An attempt to characterize the composition of the clientele of manicure salons is made. The mentioned problems are investigated for the first time in historiography on the basis of diaries of Leningrad residents, office documents and normative-legal acts. The study allows us to conclude that the pre-war practice of hand care, which was part of the “culturnost” concept, was preserved on a limited scale during the war and blockade. Consumers of the relevant services were not only people who had access to food. In addition to so-called sanitary manicure, which was compulsory for workers in a number of sectors of urban economy (food and tobacco industry, trade and catering), as the food supply improved, the services of manicurists were increasingly used by ordinary citizens, which can be seen as an element of return to familiar everyday practices and revival of urban everyday culture.