Abstract: INFORMATION that the Poulkovo Observatory had been severely damaged in the German bombardment of Leningrad was first received in a special message to the men of science of Great Britain broadcast from the besieged city on October 8, 1941, by Prof. Vassily Ogorodnikov, professor of physics in the University of Leningrad, who was fighting in the ranks of the Red Army defending Leningrad. The Observatory lies some twelve miles south of Leningrad, not far from the railway line from the German frontier to that city. The shelling of the Observatory appears to have been deliberate, and from later information it is learnt that its destruction is practically complete.