Faina Prusova donated her diary to the Military Medical Museum in 1958. Spanning the period from 1941 to 1945, it belongs to a collection dedicated to the Great Patriotic War.

The diary is referred to in “A Book of the Blockade” by Daniil Granin and Ales Adamovich. The authors commented that apart from being a nurse with a striking personality and a tragic fate as a mother, Prusova also had a definite flair for writing.

Faina Prusova worked at the Sophia Perovskaya Hospital, which was located at the corner of Cheboksarsky Lane and the Griboyedov Canal Embankment. During the war, it housed surgical beds of the Leningrad Front’s clearing station.

In her diary, Faina Prusova recalled that air strikes were less frightening when she was on duty because nurses were busy taking care of the wounded. Prusova’s children followed her career path. Her son Boris graduated from the Medical Institute and served as a military doctor. Her daughter Nadya worked as a nurse in the military hospital stationed at the Evropeyskaya Hotel and later became a medical instructor of the Leningrad front.

Faina Prusova’s records are a valuable source of information about life in besieged Leningrad. She explained what helped Leningrad citizens survive during those terrible times.

In her diary, Faina Prusova described her everyday life during the siege,

Keeping her house clean helped the diary’s author fight the horrors of the siege. During that critical period, compulsive cleaning may have been a manifestation of starvation-induced psychosis, which was experienced by all residents of the besieged Leningrad. However, maintaining a cozy home helped them survive through the difficult times.