The female part of our multinational people, together with men, children and old people, bore on their shoulders all the hardships of the Great War. Women wrote many glorious pages in the chronicle of the war.
Women were on the front line: doctors, pilots, snipers, in air defense units, signalmen, intelligence officers, drivers, topographers, reporters, even tank crews, artillerymen and served in the infantry. Women actively participated in the underground, in the partisan movement.
Women took on many “purely male” professions in the rear, since men went to war, and someone had to stand behind the machine, drive a tractor, become a lineman railways, master the profession of metallurgist, etc.
Figures and facts
Military service in the USSR is an honorable duty not only for men, but also for women. This is their right written in Art. 13th Law on General Military Duty, adopted by the IV session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 1, 1939. It states that the People's Commissariats of Defense and Navy are given the right to recruit women into the army and navy who have medical, veterinary and special - technical training, as well as attracting them to training camps. IN war time women who have the specified training may be drafted into the army and navy to perform auxiliary and special service. The feeling of pride and gratitude of Soviet women to the party and government regarding the decision of the session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was expressed by Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR E.M. Kozhushina from the Vinnitsa region: “All of us, young patriots,” she said, “are ready to speak out in defense of our beautiful Motherland. We women are proud that we are given the right to protect it on an equal basis with men. And if our party, our government calls, then we will all come to the defense of our wonderful country and give a crushing rebuff to the enemy.”
Already the first news of Germany’s treacherous attack on the USSR aroused boundless anger and burning hatred of their enemies among women. At meetings and rallies held throughout the country, they declared their readiness to defend their Motherland. Women and girls went to party and Komsomol organizations, to military commissariats and there they persistently sought to be sent to the front. Among the volunteers who applied to be sent to active army, up to 50% of applications were from women.
During the first week of the war, applications to be sent to the front were received from 20 thousand Muscovites, and after three months, 8,360 women and girls of Moscow were enrolled in the ranks of the defenders of the Motherland. Among the Leningrad Komsomol members who submitted applications in the first days of the war with a request to be sent to the active army, 27 thousand applications were from girls. More than 5 thousand girls from the Moskovsky district of Leningrad were sent to the front. 2 thousand of them became fighters of the Leningrad Front and selflessly fought on the outskirts of their hometown.
Rosa Shanina. Destroyed 54 enemies.
Created on June 30, 1941, the State Defense Committee (GKO) adopted a number of resolutions on the mobilization of women to serve in the air defense forces, communications, internal security, on military roads... Several Komsomol mobilizations were carried out, in particular the mobilization of Komsomol members in the Military Navy, Air Force and Signal Corps.
In July 1941, over 4 thousand women Krasnodar region asked to send them to the active army. In the first days of the war, 4 thousand women of the Ivanovo region volunteered. About 4 thousand girls from the Chita region, over 10 thousand from the Karaganda region became Red Army soldiers using Komsomol vouchers.
At the front in different periods From 600 thousand to 1 million women fought, 80 thousand of them were Soviet officers.
The Central Women's Sniper Training School provided the front with 1,061 snipers and 407 sniper instructors. Graduates of the school destroyed over 11,280 enemy soldiers and officers during the war.
At the end of 1942, the Ryazan Infantry School was given an order to train about 1,500 officers from female volunteers. By January 1943, over 2 thousand women arrived at the school.
For the first time during the Patriotic War, female combat formations appeared in the Armed Forces of our country. 3 aviation regiments were formed from female volunteers: 46th Guards Night Bomber, 125th Guards Bomber, 586th Air Defense Fighter Regiment; Separate women's volunteer rifle brigade, Separate women's reserve rifle regiment, Central women's sniper school, Separate women's company of sailors.
Snipers Faina Yakimova, Roza Shanina, Lidiya Volodina.
While near Moscow, the 1st Separate Women's Reserve Regiment also trained motorists and snipers, machine gunners and junior commanders of combat units. There were 2899 women on staff.
20 thousand women served in the Special Moscow Air Defense Army.
Some women were also commanders. One can name Hero of the Soviet Union Valentina Grizodubova, who throughout the war commanded the 101st Long-Range Aviation Regiment, where men served. She herself made about two hundred combat missions, delivering explosives, food to the partisans and removing the wounded.
The head of the ammunition department of the artillery department of the Polish Army was engineer-colonel Antonina Pristavko. She ended the war near Berlin. Among her awards are the orders: "Renaissance of Poland" IV class, "Cross of Grunwald" III class, "Golden Cross of Merit" and others.
In the first war year of 1941, 19 million women were employed in agricultural work, mainly on collective farms. This means that almost all the burdens of providing food for the army and the country fell on their shoulders, on their working hands.
5 million women were employed in industry, and many of them were entrusted with command posts - directors, shop managers, foremen.
Culture, education, and health care have become a matter of concern mainly for women.
Ninety-five women in our country have the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Our cosmonauts are among them.
The largest representation of participants in the Great Patriotic War among other specialties were female doctors.
From total number of doctors, of whom there were about 700 thousand in the active army, 42% were women, and among surgeons - 43.4%.
More than 2 million people served as middle and junior medical workers at the fronts. Women (paramedics, nurses, medical instructors) made up the majority - over 80 percent.
During the war years, a coherent system of medical and sanitary services for the fighting army was created. There was a so-called doctrine of military field medicine. At all stages of the evacuation of the wounded - from the company (battalion) to hospitals in the rear - female doctors selflessly carried out the noble mission of mercy.
Glorious patriots served in all branches of the military - in aviation and the marine corps, on warships of the Black Sea Fleet, the Northern Fleet, the Caspian and Dnieper flotillas, in floating naval hospitals and ambulance trains. Together with horsemen, they went on deep raids behind enemy lines and were in partisan detachments. With the infantry we reached Berlin. And everywhere doctors provided specialized assistance to those injured in battle.
It is estimated that female medical instructors of rifle companies, medical battalions, and artillery batteries helped seventy percent of wounded soldiers return to duty.
For special courage and heroism, 15 female doctors were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
A sculptural monument in Kaluga reminds of the feat of women military doctors. In the park on Kirov Street, a front-line nurse in a raincoat, with a sanitary bag over her shoulder, stands at full height on a high pedestal. During the war, the city of Kaluga was the center of numerous hospitals that treated and returned tens of thousands of soldiers and commanders to duty. That is why they built a monument in a holy place, which always has flowers.
History has never known such massive participation of women in the armed struggle for the Motherland as Soviet women showed during the Great Patriotic War. Having achieved enrollment in the ranks of the soldiers of the Red Army, women and girls mastered almost all military specialties and, together with their husbands, fathers and brothers, carried out military service in all branches of the Soviet Armed Forces.
Unidentified Soviet private girls from an anti-tank artillery unit.
“Daughter, I put together a bundle for you. Go away... Go away... You still have two younger sisters growing up. Who will marry them? Everyone knows that you were at the front for four years, with men...” The truth about women in the war, which was not written about in the newspapers...
For Victory Day, blogger radulova published memoirs of women veterans from the book by Svetlana Alexievich.
“We drove for many days... We left with the girls at some station with a bucket to get water. They looked around and gasped: one train after another was coming, and there were only girls there. They sing. They wave at us, some with headscarves, some with caps. It became clear: there weren’t enough men, they were dead in the ground. Or in captivity. Now we, instead of them... Mom wrote me a prayer. I put it in the locket. Maybe it helped - I returned home. I kissed the medallion before the fight...”
“Once at night a whole company conducted reconnaissance in force in our regiment’s sector. By dawn she had moved away, and a groan was heard from the no-man's land. Left wounded. “Don’t go, they’ll kill you,” the soldiers wouldn’t let me in, “you see, it’s already dawn.” She didn’t listen and crawled. She found a wounded man and dragged him for eight hours, tying his arm with a belt. She dragged a living one. The commander found out and rashly announced five days of arrest for unauthorized absence. But the deputy regiment commander reacted differently: “Deserves a reward.” At the age of nineteen I had a medal “For Courage”. At nineteen she turned gray. At the age of nineteen, in the last battle, both lungs were shot, the second bullet passed between two vertebrae. My legs were paralyzed... And they considered me dead... At nineteen... My granddaughter is like this now. I look at her and don’t believe it. Child!”
“I was on night duty... I went into the ward of the seriously wounded. The captain is lying there... The doctors warned me before duty that he would die at night... He wouldn’t live until the morning... I asked him: “Well, how? How can I help you?" I’ll never forget... He suddenly smiled, such a bright smile on his exhausted face: “Unbutton your robe... Show me your breasts... I haven’t seen my wife for a long time...” I felt ashamed, I answered him something. She left and returned an hour later. He lies dead. And that smile on his face..."
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“And when he appeared for the third time, in one moment - he would appear and then disappear - I decided to shoot. I made up my mind, and suddenly such a thought flashed: this is a man, even though he is an enemy, but a man, and my hands somehow began to tremble, trembling and chills began to spread throughout my body. Some kind of fear... Sometimes in my dreams this feeling comes back to me... After the plywood targets, it was difficult to shoot at a living person. I see him through the optical sight, I see him well. It’s as if he’s close... And something inside me resists... Something won’t let me, I can’t make up my mind. But I pulled myself together, pulled the trigger... We didn’t succeed right away. It’s not a woman’s business to hate and kill. Not ours... We had to convince ourselves. Persuade…"
“And the girls were eager to go to the front voluntarily, but a coward himself would not go to war. These were brave, extraordinary girls. There are statistics: losses among frontline medics ranked second after losses in rifle battalions. In the infantry. What does it mean, for example, to pull a wounded man out of the battlefield? I’ll tell you now... We went on the attack, and let’s mow us down with a machine gun. And the battalion was gone. Everyone was lying down. They were not all killed, many were wounded. The Germans are hitting and they don’t stop firing. Quite unexpectedly for everyone, first one girl jumps out of the trench, then a second, a third... They began to bandage and drag away the wounded, even the Germans were speechless with amazement for a while. By ten o'clock in the evening, all the girls were seriously wounded, and each saved a maximum of two or three people. They were awarded sparingly; at the beginning of the war, awards were not scattered. The wounded man had to be pulled out along with his personal weapon. The first question in the medical battalion: where are the weapons? At the beginning of the war there was not enough of him. A rifle, a machine gun, a machine gun - these also had to be carried. In forty-one, order number two hundred and eighty-one was issued on the presentation of awards for saving the lives of soldiers: for fifteen seriously wounded people carried out from the battlefield along with personal weapons - the medal “For Military Merit”, for saving twenty-five people - the Order of the Red Star, for saving forty - the Order of the Red Banner, for saving eighty - the Order of Lenin. And I described to you what it meant to save at least one person in battle... From the bullets...”
“What was going on in our souls, the kind of people we were then will probably never exist again. Never! So naive and so sincere. With such faith! When our regiment commander received the banner and gave the command: “Regiment, under the banner! On your knees!”, we all felt happy. We stand and cry, everyone has tears in their eyes. You won’t believe it now, my whole body tensed up from this shock, my illness, and I got “night blindness”, it happened from malnutrition, from nervous fatigue, and so, my night blindness went away. You see, the next day I was healthy, I recovered, through such a shock to my whole soul...”
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“I was thrown against a brick wall by a hurricane wave. I lost consciousness... When I came to my senses, it was already evening. She raised her head, tried to squeeze her fingers - they seemed to be moving, barely opened her left eye and went to the department, covered in blood. In the corridor I meet our older sister, she didn’t recognize me and asked: “Who are you? Where?" She came closer, gasped and said: “Where have you been for so long, Ksenya? The wounded are hungry, but you are not there.” They quickly bandaged my head and my left arm above the elbow, and I went to get dinner. It was getting dark before my eyes and sweat was pouring out. I started handing out dinner and fell. They brought me back to consciousness, and all I could hear was: “Hurry! Hurry up!” And again - “Hurry! Hurry up!” A few days later they took more blood from me for the seriously wounded.”
“We were young and went to the front. Girls. I even grew up during the war. Mom tried it on at home... I have grown ten centimeters..."
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“They organized nursing courses, and my father took my sister and me there. I am fifteen years old, and my sister is fourteen. He said: “This is all I can give to win. My girls...” There was no other thought then. A year later I went to the front...”
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“Our mother had no sons... And when Stalingrad was besieged, we voluntarily went to the front. Together. The whole family: mother and five daughters, and by this time the father had already fought…”
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“I was mobilized, I was a doctor. I left with a sense of duty. And my dad was happy that his daughter was at the front. Defends the Motherland. Dad went to the military registration and enlistment office early in the morning. He went to receive my certificate and went early in the morning specifically so that everyone in the village would see that his daughter was at the front...”
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“I remember they let me go on leave. Before going to my aunt, I went to the store. Before the war, I loved candy terribly. I say:
- Give me some sweets.
The saleswoman looks at me like I'm crazy. I didn’t understand: what are cards, what is a blockade? All the people in line turned to me, and I had a rifle bigger than me. When they gave them to us, I looked and thought: “When will I grow up to this rifle?” And everyone suddenly began to ask, the whole line:
- Give her some sweets. Cut out the coupons from us.
And they gave it to me.”
“And for the first time in my life, it happened... Ours... Women's... I saw blood on myself, and I screamed:
- I was hurt...
During reconnaissance, we had a paramedic with us, an elderly man. He comes to me:
- Where did it hurt?
- I don’t know where... But blood...
He, like a father, told me everything... I went to reconnaissance after the war for about fifteen years. Every night. And the dreams are like this: either my machine gun failed, or we were surrounded. You wake up and your teeth are grinding. Do you remember where you are? There or here?”
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“I went to the front as a materialist. An atheist. She left as a good Soviet schoolgirl, who was taught well. And there... There I began to pray... I always prayed before the battle, I read my prayers. The words are simple... My words... The meaning is one, that I return to mom and dad. I didn’t know real prayers, and I didn’t read the Bible. No one saw me pray. I am secretly. She secretly prayed. Carefully. Because... We were different then, different people lived then. You understand?"
“It was impossible to attack us with uniforms: they were always in the blood. My first wounded was Senior Lieutenant Belov, my last wounded was Sergei Petrovich Trofimov, sergeant of the mortar platoon. In 1970, he came to visit me, and I showed my daughters his wounded head, which still has a large scar on it. In total, I carried out four hundred and eighty-one wounded from under fire. One of the journalists calculated: a whole rifle battalion... They were carrying men two to three times heavier than us. And they are even more seriously wounded. You are dragging him and his weapon, and he is also wearing an overcoat and boots. You put eighty kilograms on yourself and drag it. You lose... You go after the next one, and again seventy-eighty kilograms... And so five or six times in one attack. And you yourself have forty-eight kilograms - ballet weight. Now I can’t believe it anymore...”
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“I later became a squad commander. The entire squad is made up of young boys. We're on the boat all day. The boat is small, there are no latrines. The guys can go overboard if necessary, and that’s it. Well, what about me? A couple of times I got so bad that I jumped straight overboard and started swimming. They shout: “The foreman is overboard!” They'll pull you out. This is such an elementary little thing... But what kind of little thing is this? I then received treatment...
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“I returned from the war gray-haired. Twenty-one years old, and I’m all white. I was seriously wounded, concussed, and I couldn’t hear well in one ear. My mother greeted me with the words: “I believed that you would come. I prayed for you day and night.” My brother died at the front. She cried: “It’s the same now - give birth to girls or boys.”
“But I’ll say something else... The worst thing for me in war is wearing men’s underpants. That was scary. And this somehow... I can’t express myself... Well, first of all, it’s very ugly... You’re at war, you’re going to die for your Motherland, and you’re wearing men’s underpants. Overall, you look funny. Ridiculous. Men's underpants were long then. Wide. Sewed from satin. Ten girls in our dugout, and all of them are wearing men's underpants. Oh my God! In winter and summer. Four years... We crossed the Soviet border... We finished off, as our commissar said during political classes, the beast in its own den. Near the first Polish village they changed our clothes, gave us new uniforms and... And! AND! AND! They brought women's panties and bras for the first time. For the first time throughout the war. Haaaa... Well, I see... We saw normal women's underwear... Why aren't you laughing? Are you crying... Well, why?”
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“At the age of eighteen, on the Kursk Bulge, I was awarded the medal “For Military Merit” and the Order of the Red Star, at the age of nineteen - the Order of the Patriotic War, second degree. When new additions arrived, the guys were all young, of course, they were surprised. They were also eighteen to nineteen years old, and they asked with ridicule: “What did you get your medals for?” or “Have you been in battle?” They pester you with jokes: “Do bullets penetrate the armor of a tank?” I later bandaged one of these on the battlefield, under fire, and I remembered his last name - Shchegolevatykh. His leg was broken. I splint him, and he asks me for forgiveness: “Sister, I’m sorry that I offended you then...”
“We disguised ourselves. We are sitting. We are waiting for night to finally make an attempt to break through. And Lieutenant Misha T., the battalion commander was wounded, and he was performing the duties of a battalion commander, he was twenty years old, and began to remember how he loved to dance and play the guitar. Then he asks:
-Have you even tried it?
- What? What have you tried? “But I was terribly hungry.”
- Not what, but who... Babu!
And before the war there were cakes like this. With that name.
- No-no...
- I haven’t tried it yet either. You’ll die and won’t know what love is... They’ll kill us at night...
- Fuck you, fool! “It dawned on me what he meant.”
They died for life, not yet knowing what life was. We have only read about everything in books. I loved movies about love...”
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“She shielded her loved one from the mine fragment. The fragments fly - it's just a fraction of a second... How did she make it? She saved Lieutenant Petya Boychevsky, she loved him. And he stayed to live. Thirty years later, Petya Boychevsky came from Krasnodar and found me at our front-line meeting, and told me all this. We went with him to Borisov and found the clearing where Tonya died. He took the earth from her grave... He carried it and kissed it... There were five of us, Konakovo girls... And I alone returned to my mother...”
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“A separate smoke masking detachment was organized, commanded by the former commander of the torpedo boat division, Lieutenant Commander Alexander Bogdanov. Girls, mostly with secondary technical education or after the first years of college. Our task is to protect the ships and cover them with smoke. The shelling will begin, the sailors are waiting: “I wish the girls would put up some smoke. It’s calmer with him.” We went out in cars with special mixture, and at that time everyone was hiding in a bomb shelter. We, as they say, invited fire upon ourselves. The Germans were hitting this smoke screen...”
“I’m bandaging the tanker... The battle is on, there’s a roar. He asks: “Girl, what’s your name?” Even some kind of compliment. It was so strange for me to pronounce my name, Olya, in this roar, in this horror.”
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“And here I am the gun commander. And that means I am in the one thousand three hundred and fifty-seventh anti-aircraft regiment. At first, there was bleeding from the nose and ears, complete indigestion set in... My throat was dry to the point of vomiting... At night it was not so scary, but during the day it was very scary. It seems that the plane is flying straight at you, specifically at your gun. It's ramming at you! This is one moment... Now it will turn all, all of you into nothing. Everything is over!”
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“And by the time they found me, my legs were severely frostbitten. Apparently, I was covered in snow, but I was breathing, and a hole appeared in the snow... Such a tube... The ambulance dogs found me. They dug up the snow and brought my earflap hat. There I had a passport of death, everyone had such passports: which relatives, where to report. They dug me out, put me on a raincoat, my coat was full of blood... But no one paid attention to my legs... I was in the hospital for six months. They wanted to amputate the leg, amputate it above the knee, because gangrene was setting in. And here I was a little faint-hearted, I didn’t want to remain living as a cripple. Why should I live? Who needs me? Neither father nor mother. A burden in life. Well, who needs me, stump! I’ll choke..."
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“We received a tank there. We were both senior driver mechanics, and there should only be one driver in a tank. The command decided to appoint me as commander of the IS-122 tank, and my husband as senior mechanic-driver. And so we reached Germany. Both are wounded. We have awards. There were quite a few female tankers on medium tanks, but on heavy tanks I was the only one.”
“We were told to dress in military uniform, and I’m about fifty meters. I got into my trousers, and the girls upstairs tied them around me.”
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“As long as he hears... Until the last moment you tell him that no, no, is it really possible to die. You kiss him, hug him: what are you, what are you? He already dead, eyes to the ceiling, and I whisper something else to him... I calm him down... The names have been erased, gone from memory, but the faces remain..."
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“We had a nurse captured... A day later, when we recaptured that village, dead horses, motorcycles, and armored personnel carriers were lying everywhere. They found her: her eyes were gouged out, her breasts were cut off... She was impaled... It was frosty, and she was white and white, and her hair was all gray. She was nineteen years old. In her backpack we found letters from home and a green rubber bird. A children's toy..."
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“Near Sevsk, the Germans attacked us seven to eight times a day. And even that day I carried out the wounded with their weapons. I crawled up to the last one, and his arm was completely broken. Dangling in pieces... On the veins... Covered in blood... He urgently needs to cut off his hand to bandage it. No other way. And I have neither a knife nor scissors. The bag shifted and shifted on its side, and they fell out. What to do? And I chewed this pulp with my teeth. I gnawed it, bandaged it... I bandaged it, and the wounded man: “Hurry, sister. I’ll fight again.” In a fever..."
“The whole war I was afraid that my legs would be crippled. I had beautiful legs. What to a man? He’s not so scared if he even loses his legs. Still a hero. Groom! If a woman gets hurt, then her fate will be decided. Women's destiny..."
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“The men will build a fire at the bus stop, shake out the lice, and dry themselves. Where are we? Let's run for some shelter and undress there. I had a knitted sweater, so lice sat on every millimeter, in every loop. Look, you'll feel nauseous. There are head lice, body lice, pubic lice... I had them all...”
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“Near Makeyevka, in Donbass, I was wounded, wounded in the thigh. This little fragment came in and sat there like a pebble. I feel it’s blood, I put an individual bag there too. And then I run and bandage it. It’s a shame to tell anyone, the girl was wounded, but where – in the buttock. In the ass... At sixteen years old, this is a shame to say to anyone. It's awkward to admit. Well, so I ran and bandaged until I lost consciousness from loss of blood. The boots are full..."
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“The doctor arrived, did a cardiogram, and they asked me:
- When did you have a heart attack?
- What heart attack?
- Your whole heart is scarred.
And these scars are apparently from the war. You approach the target, you are shaking all over. The whole body is covered with trembling, because there is fire below: fighters are shooting, anti-aircraft guns are shooting... We flew mainly at night. For a while they tried to send us on missions during the day, but they immediately abandoned this idea. Our “Po-2” shot down from a machine gun... We made up to twelve sorties per night. I saw the famous ace pilot Pokryshkin when he arrived from a combat flight. He was a strong man, he was not twenty or twenty-three years old like us: while the plane was being refueled, the technician managed to take off his shirt and unscrew it. It was dripping as if he had been in the rain. Now you can easily imagine what happened to us. You arrive and you can’t even get out of the cabin, they pulled us out. They couldn’t carry the tablet anymore, they dragged it along the ground.”
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“We strived... We didn’t want people to say about us: “Oh, those women!” And we tried harder than men, we still had to prove that we were no worse than men. And for a long time there was an arrogant, condescending attitude towards us: “These women will fight…”
“Wounded three times and shell-shocked three times. During the war, everyone dreamed of what: some to return home, some to reach Berlin, but I only dreamed of one thing - to live to see my birthday, so that I would turn eighteen. For some reason, I was afraid to die earlier, not even live to see eighteen. I walked around in trousers and a cap, always in tatters, because you are always crawling on your knees, and even under the weight of a wounded person. I couldn’t believe that one day it would be possible to stand up and walk on the ground instead of crawling. It was a dream! One day the division commander arrived, saw me and asked: “What kind of teenager is this? Why are you holding him? He should be sent to study.”
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“We were happy when we took out a pot of water to wash our hair. If you walked for a long time, you looked for soft grass. They also tore her legs... Well, you know, they washed them off with grass... We had our own characteristics, girls... The army didn’t think about it... Our legs were green... It’s good if the foreman was an elderly man and understood everything, didn’t take excess underwear from his duffel bag, and if he’s young, he’ll definitely throw away the excess. And what a waste it is for girls who need to change clothes twice a day. We tore the sleeves off our undershirts, and there were only two of them. These are only four sleeves...”
“Let’s go... There are about two hundred girls, and behind us there are about two hundred men. It's hot. Hot Summer. March throw - thirty kilometers. The heat is wild... And after us there are red spots on the sand... Red footprints... Well, these things... Ours... How can you hide anything here? The soldiers follow behind and pretend that they don’t notice anything... They don’t look at their feet... Our trousers dried up, as if they were made of glass. They cut it. There were wounds there, and the smell of blood could be heard all the time. They didn’t give us anything... We kept watch: when the soldiers hung their shirts on the bushes. We’ll steal a couple of pieces... Later they guessed and laughed: “Master, give us some other underwear. The girls took ours.” There was not enough cotton wool and bandages for the wounded... Not that... Women's underwear, perhaps, appeared only two years later. We wore men's shorts and T-shirts... Well, let's go... Wearing boots! My legs were also fried. Let's go... To the crossing, ferries are waiting there. We got to the crossing, and then they started bombing us. The bombing is terrible, men - who knows where to hide. Our name is... But we don’t hear the bombing, we have no time for bombing, we’d rather go to the river. To the water... Water! Water! And they sat there until they got wet... Under the fragments... Here it is... The shame was worse than death. And several girls died in the water...”
“Finally got the appointment. They brought me to my platoon... The soldiers looked: some with mockery, some even with anger, and others shrugging their shoulders - everything was immediately clear. When the battalion commander introduced that, supposedly, you have a new platoon commander, everyone immediately howled: “Oooh…” One even spat: “Ugh!” And a year later, when I was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the same guys who survived carried me in their arms to my dugout. They were proud of me.”
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“We set out on a mission in a quick march. The weather was warm, we walked light. When the positions of long-range artillerymen began to pass, suddenly one jumped out of the trench and shouted: “Air! Frame!" I raised my head and looked for a “frame” in the sky. I don't detect any plane. It's quiet all around, not a sound. Where is that “frame”? Then one of my sappers asked permission to leave the ranks. I see him heading towards that artilleryman and slapping him in the face. Before I had time to think of anything, the artilleryman shouted: “Boys, they’re beating our people!” Other artillerymen jumped out of the trench and surrounded our sapper. My platoon, without hesitation, threw down the probes, mine detectors, and duffel bags and rushed to his rescue. A fight ensued. I couldn't understand what happened? Why did the platoon get involved in a fight? Every minute counts, and there’s such a mess here. I give the command: “Platoon, get into formation!” Nobody pays attention to me. Then I pulled out a pistol and shot into the air. Officers jumped out of the dugout. By the time everyone was calmed down, a significant amount of time had passed. The captain approached my platoon and asked: “Who is the eldest here?” I reported. His eyes widened, he was even confused. Then he asked: “What happened here?” I couldn't answer because I didn't really know the reason. Then my platoon commander came out and told me how it all happened. This is how I learned what “frame” was, what an offensive word it was for a woman. Something like a whore. Frontline curse..."
“Are you asking about love? I’m not afraid to tell the truth... I was a pepezhe, which stands for “field wife.” Wife at war. Second. Illegal. The first battalion commander... I didn’t love him. He was a good man, but I didn't love him. And I went to his dugout a few months later. Where to go? There are only men around, it’s better to live with one than to be afraid of everyone. During the battle it was not as scary as after the battle, especially when we were resting and re-forming. As they shoot, fire, they call: “Sister! Little sister!”, and after the battle everyone will guard you... You won’t get out of the dugout at night... Did the other girls tell you this or didn’t they admit it? They were ashamed, I think... They kept silent. Proud! And it all happened... But they are silent about it... It is not accepted... No... For example, I was the only woman in the battalion who lived in a common dugout. Together with men. They gave me a place, but what a separate place it is, the whole dugout is six meters. I woke up at night from waving my arms, then I would hit one on the cheeks, on the hands, then on the other. I was wounded, ended up in the hospital and waved my hands there. The nanny will wake you up at night: “What are you doing?” Who will you tell?”
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“We buried him... He was lying on a raincoat, he had just been killed. The Germans are firing at us. We need to bury it quickly... Right now... We found old birch trees and chose the one that stood at a distance from the old oak tree. The biggest. Near it... I tried to remember so that I could come back and find this place later. Here the village ends, here there is a fork... But how to remember? How to remember if one birch tree is already burning before our eyes... How? They began to say goodbye... They told me: “You are the first!” My heart jumped, I realized... What... Everyone, it turns out, knows about my love. Everyone knows... The thought struck: maybe he knew too? Here... He lies... Now they will lower him into the ground... They will bury him. They’ll cover it with sand... But I was terribly happy at the thought that maybe he knew too. What if he liked me too? As if he was alive and would answer me something now... I remembered how on New Year he gave me a German chocolate bar. I didn’t eat it for a month, I carried it in my pocket. Now it doesn’t reach me, I remember all my life... This moment... Bombs are flying... He... Lying on a raincoat... This moment... And I am happy... I stand and smile to myself. Abnormal. I’m glad that maybe he knew about my love... I came up and kissed him. I’ve never kissed a man before... This was the first...”
“How did the Motherland greet us? I can’t do without sobbing... Forty years have passed, and my cheeks are still burning. The men were silent, and the women... They shouted to us: “We know what you were doing there!” They lured young p... our men. Front-line b... Military bitches..." They insulted me in every way... The Russian dictionary is rich... A guy is seeing me off from the dance, I suddenly feel bad, my heart is pounding. I'll go and sit in a snowdrift. "What happened to you?" - "Never mind. I danced." And these are my two wounds... This is war... And we must learn to be gentle. To be weak and fragile, and your feet in boots were worn out - size forty. It's unusual for someone to hug me. I'm used to being responsible for myself. I was waiting for kind words, but I didn’t understand them. They are like children's to me. At the front among the men there is a strong Russian mate. I'm used to it. A friend taught me, she worked in the library: “Read poetry. Read Yesenin.”
“My legs disappeared... My legs were cut off... They saved me there, in the forest... The operation took place in the most primitive conditions. They put me on the table to operate, and there wasn’t even iodine; they sawed my legs, both legs, with a simple saw... They put me on the table, and there was no iodine. Six kilometers away, we went to another partisan detachment to get iodine, and I was lying on the table. Without anesthesia. Without... Instead of anesthesia - a bottle of moonshine. There was nothing but regular saw... Carpenter... We had a surgeon, he himself also has no legs, he spoke about me, other doctors said this: “I bow to her. I have operated on so many men, but I have never seen such men. He won’t scream.” I held on... I'm used to being strong in public..."
……………………………………..
Running up to the car, she opened the door and began to report:
- Comrade General, on your orders...
I heard:
- Leave...
She stood at attention. The general didn’t even turn to me, but looked at the road through the car window. He is nervous and often looks at his watch. I am standing. He turns to his orderly:
- Where is that sapper commander?
I tried to report again:
- Comrade General...
He finally turned to me and with annoyance:
- Why the hell do I need you!
I understood everything and almost burst out laughing. Then his orderly was the first to guess:
- Comrade General, maybe she is the commander of the sappers?
The general stared at me:
- Who are you?
- Comrade General, sapper platoon commander.
-Are you a platoon commander? – he was indignant.
- Are these your sappers working?
- That's right, Comrade General!
- Got it wrong: general, general...
He got out of the car, walked a few steps forward, then came back to me. He stood and looked around. And to his orderly:
……………………………………….
“My husband was a senior driver, and I was a driver. For four years we traveled in a heated vehicle, and our son came with us. During the entire war he didn’t even see a cat. When he caught a cat near Kiev, our train was terribly bombed, five planes flew in, and he hugged her: “Dear little kitty, how glad I am that I saw you. I don't see anyone, well, sit with me. Let me kiss you.” A child... Everything about a child should be childish... He fell asleep with the words: “Mommy, we have a cat. We now have a real home.”
“Anya Kaburova is lying on the grass... Our signalman. She dies - a bullet hit her heart. At this time, a wedge of cranes flies over us. Everyone raised their heads to the sky, and she opened her eyes. She looked: “What a pity, girls.” Then she paused and smiled at us: “Girls, am I really going to die?” At this time, our postman, our Klava, is running, she shouts: “Don’t die! Do not die! You have a letter from home...” Anya does not close her eyes, she is waiting... Our Klava sat down next to her and opened the envelope. A letter from my mother: “My dear, beloved daughter...” A doctor is standing next to me, he says: “This is a miracle. Miracle!! She lives contrary to all the laws of medicine...” They finished reading the letter... And only then Anya closed her eyes...”
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“I stayed with him one day, then the second, and I decided: “Go to headquarters and report. I’ll stay here with you.” He went to the authorities, but I couldn’t breathe: well, how can they say that she wouldn’t be able to walk for twenty-four hours? This is the front, that's clear. And suddenly I see the authorities coming into the dugout: major, colonel. Everyone shakes hands. Then, of course, we sat down in the dugout, drank, and each said his word that the wife found her husband in the trench, this is real wife, there are documents. This is such a woman! Let me look at such a woman! They said such words, they all cried. I remember that evening all my life... What do I still have left? Enlisted as a nurse. I went with him on reconnaissance. The mortar hits, I see - it fell. I think: killed or wounded? I run there, and the mortar hits, and the commander shouts: “Where are you going, damn woman!!” I’ll crawl up - alive... Alive!”
…………………………………
“Two years ago, our chief of staff Ivan Mikhailovich Grinko visited me. He has been retired for a long time. He sat at the same table. I also baked pies. She and her husband are talking, reminiscing... They started talking about our girls... And I started to roar: “Honor, you say, respect. And the girls are almost all single. Unmarried. They live in communal apartments. Who took pity on them? Defended? Where did you all go after the war? Traitors!!” In a word, I ruined their festive mood... The chief of staff was sitting in your place. “Show me,” he banged his fist on the table, “who offended you.” Just show it to me!” He asked for forgiveness: “Valya, I can’t tell you anything except tears.”
………………………………..
“I reached Berlin with the army... I returned to my village with two Orders of Glory and medals. I lived for three days, and on the fourth my mother lifted me out of bed and said: “Daughter, I put together a bundle for you. Go away... Go away... You still have two younger sisters growing up. Who will marry them? Everyone knows that you were at the front for four years, with men...” “Don’t touch my soul. Write, like others, about my awards...”
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“Near Stalingrad... I’m dragging two wounded. If I drag one through, I leave it, then the other. And so I pull them one by one, because the wounded are very serious, they cannot be left, both, as it is easier to explain, have their legs cut off high, they are bleeding. Minutes are precious here, every minute. And suddenly, when I crawled further away from the battle, there was less smoke, suddenly I discovered that I was dragging one of our tankers and one German... I was horrified: our people were dying there, and I was saving a German. I was in a panic... There, in the smoke, I couldn’t figure it out... I see: a man is dying, a man is screaming... Ah-ah... They are both burnt, black. The same. And then I saw: someone else’s medallion, someone else’s watch, everything was someone else’s. This form is cursed. So what now? I pull our wounded man and think: “Should I go back for the German or not?” I understood that if I left him, he would soon die. From loss of blood... And I crawled after him. I continued to drag them both... This is Stalingrad... The most terrible battles. The best of the best. My you are diamond... There cannot be one heart for hatred and another for love. A person has only one.”
“The war ended, they found themselves terribly unprotected. Here's my wife. She is a smart woman, and she has a bad attitude towards military girls. He believes that they were going to war to find suitors, that they were all having affairs there. Although in fact, we are having a sincere conversation; most often these were honest girls. Clean. But after the war... After the dirt, after the lice, after the deaths... I wanted something beautiful. Bright. Beautiful women... I had a friend, one beautiful girl, as I now understand, loved him at the front. Nurse. But he didn’t marry her, he was demobilized and found himself another, prettier one. And he is unhappy with his wife. Now he remembers that one, his military love, she would have been his friend. And after the front, he didn’t want to marry her, because for four years he saw her only in worn-out boots and a man’s quilted jacket. We tried to forget the war. And they forgot their girls too...”
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“My friend... I won’t give her last name, in case she gets offended... Military paramedic... Wounded three times. The war ended, I entered medical school. She didn’t find any of her relatives; they all died. She was terribly poor, washing the entrances at night to feed herself. But she didn’t admit to anyone that she was a disabled war veteran and had benefits; she tore up all the documents. I ask: “Why did you break it?” She cries: “Who would marry me?” “Well,” I say, “I did the right thing.” She cries even louder: “I could use these pieces of paper now. I’m seriously ill.” Can you imagine? Crying.”
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“We went to Kineshma, this is the Ivanovo region, to his parents. I was traveling like a heroine, I never thought that you could meet a front-line girl like that. We have gone through so much, saved so many mothers of children, wives of husbands. And suddenly... I recognized the insult, I heard offensive words. Before this, except for: “dear sister”, “dear sister”, I had not heard anything else... We sat down to drink tea in the evening, the mother took her son to the kitchen and cried: “Who did you marry? At the front... You have two younger sisters. Who will marry them now?” And now, when I remember this, I want to cry. Imagine: I brought the record, I loved it very much. There were these words: and you have the right to walk in the most fashionable shoes... This is about a front-line girl. I set it up, the older sister came up and broke it in front of my eyes, saying, “You have no rights.” They destroyed all my front-line photographs... We, front-line girls, have had enough. And after the war it happened, after the war we had another war. Also scary. Somehow the men left us. They didn't cover it. It was different at the front.”
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“It was then that they began to honor us, thirty years later... They invited us to meetings... But at first we hid, we didn’t even wear awards. Men wore them, but women did not. Men are winners, heroes, suitors, they had a war, but they looked at us with completely different eyes. Completely different... Let me tell you, they took away our victory... They did not share the victory with us. And it was a shame... It’s unclear...”
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“The first medal “For Courage”... The battle began. The fire is heavy. The soldiers lay down. Command: “Forward! For the Motherland!”, and they lie there. Again the command, again they lie down. I took off my hat so they could see: the girl stood up... And they all stood up, and we went into battle...”
« I still don't quite understand
How am I, thin and small,
Through the fires to the victorious May
In my kirzachs I arrived...»
Yulia Drunina
Much has been written about the exploits of women in the Great Patriotic War. Who will say today: how many of them, famous and nameless heroines, walked the hard roads of the War? How many of them did not return? Who was that girl in the ambulance with the wounded, who was ambushed near the village of B. Zimnitsa, who until the last shot with a machine gun from the Nazis, who were confident of an easy victory? The enemy paid dearly for this victory.
According to statistics, at least 800 thousand women became pilots, tank crews, anti-aircraft gunners, machine gunners, reconnaissance officers, snipers, signalmen, nurses and medical instructors, etc. Women warriors fulfilled their duty with honor in all branches of the military. During the War, about 150 thousand women soldiers of the Red Army were awarded orders and medals, more than 90 women were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Medical instructor
War does not have a woman's face. It’s hard for men at the front, but it’s much harder for women. The largest group of women directly on the front line were medical instructors. Where did these sometimes fragile creatures have the strength to pull out dozens of wounded under enemy fire, each of whom was much heavier than the medical instructor himself? Not every man can do this. And they managed. And they died along with the soldiers. The Red Cross did not save the enemy from a bullet.
«
…I came from school to damp dugouts,
From Beautiful Lady in “mother” and “rewind”,
Because the name is closer than "Russia"
Couldn't find»
These lines belong to the pen of Yulia Vladimirovna Drunina, a front-line woman with a tragic fate. It is probably impossible to more accurately describe such a dramatic transformation from romantic youth into the bloody reality of the War. From a young age, Drunina prepared herself for literary activity: she wrote poetry and successfully participated in creative competitions. But the War made its own adjustments. From the very beginning of the War, Yulia enrolled in a voluntary sanitary squad and completed nursing courses. In August 1941, she worked near Mozhaisk on the construction of defensive structures. During one of the air raids, she fell behind her squad and got lost. Having joined a group of infantrymen who needed a nurse, she spent 13 days getting out of encirclement behind enemy lines. After the death of a seriously ill father in 1942 Drunina asked to go to the front, and was sent to the 667th Infantry Regiment of the 218th Infantry Division.
In 1943, after being seriously wounded, Yulia Vladimirovna was discharged. After some time, she was examined again and was found fit to military service and was sent to the 1038th self-propelled artillery regiment of the 3rd Baltic Front. Under enemy fire, she fearlessly bandaged wounded soldiers and pulled them out of the battlefield.. During one of the offensive operations During the day, she provided assistance to 17 soldiers and carried them along with their weapons from the battlefield. In 1944, during one of the battles, she was severely shell-shocked, after which, in November, she received disability and was finally commissioned with the rank of sergeant major in the medical service. For military distinction, Yulia Vladimirovna Drunina was awarded the Order of the Red Star and the Medal “For Courage.”
“I’ve only seen hand-to-hand combat once,
Once in reality. And a thousand - in a dream.
Who says that war is not scary?
He knows nothing about the war."
Returning to Moscow, Drunina entered the literary institute, and in 1945 she began to actively publish. Two years later she was accepted into the Writers' Union. This is how her literary career began.
In the same regiment with Yulia Drunina, medical instructor Zinaida Aleksandrovna Samsonova fought, who was only 19 years old at the time of her death. The poetess dedicated one of her most heartfelt poems, “Zinka,” to her..
We lay down near a broken fir tree.
We are waiting for it to start getting brighter.
It's warmer for two under an overcoat
On chilled, rotten ground.
- You know, Yulka, I am against sadness,
But today it doesn't count.
At home, in the apple outback,
Mom, my mother lives.
You have friends, darling,
I only have one.
Spring is bubbling beyond the threshold.
It seems old: every bush
A restless daughter is waiting...
You know, Yulka, I am against sadness,
But today it doesn't count.
We barely warmed up.
Suddenly the order: “Move forward!”
Close again, in a damp overcoat
The blonde soldier is coming.
Every day it became worse.
They walked without rallies or banners.
Surrounded near Orsha
Our battered battalion.
Zinka led us into the attack.
We made our way through the black rye,
Along funnels and gullies
Through mortal boundaries.
We did not expect posthumous fame.-
We wanted to live with glory.
...Why in bloody bandages
The blonde soldier is lying down?
Her body with her overcoat
I covered it up, clenching my teeth...
The Belarusian winds sang
About the Ryazan wilderness gardens.
- You know, Zinka, I am against sadness,
But today it doesn't count.
Somewhere, in the apple outback,
Mom, your mother lives.
I have friends, my love,
She had you alone.
The house smells like bread and smoke,
Spring is just around the corner.
And an old lady in a flowery dress
She lit a candle at the icon.
...I don't know how to write to her,
So she wouldn’t be waiting for you?!”
After graduating from a seven-year school in 1939, Zinaida Samsonova worked for two years as a nurse in a home for the disabled, from where she was mobilized to build defensive structures on the outskirts of Moscow. In the autumn of 1942, after completing nursing courses Yegoryevsk Medical School, was drafted into the Red Army. Zinaida Alexandrovna provided first aid to the wounded at the front line during the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk. She especially distinguished herself during the crossing of the Dnieper. On September 24, Samsonova crossed to the right bank as part of the first landing detachment of the advanced units of the 47th Army. Cut off from the main units by massive enemy fire, our paratroopers selflessly held and expanded the captured bridgehead. The brave medical instructor destroyed three Nazis on the first day of fighting. During numerous German counterattacks under continuous enemy fire, she was able to provide assistance, carry more than 30 soldiers and officers from the battlefield and transport them to the left bank. On September 27, 1943, Samsonova, skillfully operating with a machine gun and grenades, took an active part in repelling a German counterattack near the village of Pekari.
For her perseverance, courage and bravery on the right bank of the Dnieper in the fight against the German occupiers, Zinaida Aleksandrovna Samsonova was nominated for the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
After crossing the Dnieper, she took part in the battles for Kyiv and Zhitomir. At the end of November 1943, the division in which medical instructor Samsonova served was transferred to the Belorussian Front. January 27, 1944 in the battle for the village of Kholm, Gomel region, senior sergeant Samsonova died. A German sniper's bullet caught Zinaida in no man's land while trying to carry out a wounded soldier.
Samsonova was buried in a mass grave in the village of Ozarichi, Gomel region, one of the streets of which bears the name of the famous medical instructor. The name of Hero of the Soviet Union Samsonova is also given to the museum of military glory in the village of Kolychevo and the Mikhalevskaya secondary school in the Yegoryevsky district of the Moscow region. And on the facade of the Yegoryevsk Medical School named after Hero of the Soviet Union Samsonova in the city of Yegoryevsk, a memorial plaque was installed in honor of the heroic graduate. A bust of the brave medical instructor Zina was also erected there.
During the Great Patriotic War, at least 17 women doctors and medical instructors received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. One of them was medical instructor Zinaida Ivanovna Mareseva.
After seven years of school, Mareseva graduated from the College of Medical Assistants and Midwives and courses for nurses of the Red Cross Society. Baptism of fire Zina Mareseva received at the walls of Stalingrad. Sparing no effort and without losing courage and faith in victory, she provided first aid to the wounded, carried the seriously wounded on herself and delivered them to the crossing on the Volga.
In 1943, Mareseva took part in the battles in the Northern Donets region. She was always seen on the battlefield. To apply a splint, a fixed bandage, she used the wounded man's rifle, sticks, branches, and boards.
When one group of fighters, after a long battle, began to retreat to the river, Mareseva, being on the battlefield with the wounded, rushed with a pistol in her hands to the retreating fighters and shouting “Hurray, forward, follow me!” carried them along. The fighters boldly followed her, destroying the confused enemy. After the enemy counterattack was repulsed, medical instructor Mareseva continued to carry the wounded from the battlefield. And at night she evacuated the wounded along the pedestrian bridge across the Northern Donets. Over the course of two days, Zinaida Mareseva carried 64 wounded soldiers and officers from the battlefield, 52 of them with weapons.
Zina bandaged the wounded under a shower of enemy bullets and shells. Rushing to the wounded commander and seeing a fascist aiming at him with a machine gun, Zina Mareseva rushed forward, found herself between the commander and the fascist and covered the wounded man with her body. And at the same moment she was struck by the enemy’s machine gun fire. Zinaida died after staying in the hospital for three days.
She was posthumously awarded h recognition of the Hero of the Soviet Union.
In addition to the highest award, Mareseva was awarded the Order of the Red Star and was awarded the medals “For Military Merit” and “For the Defense of Stalingrad.” Streets in Volgograd and the village of Pyatnitskoye, Belgorod Region, received her name. Monuments were erected not far from the battle site in the village of Solomino, as well as at the grave of Zinaida Ivanovna in the village of Pyatnitskoye.
Machine gunner
The commander of the machine gun crew of the Chapaev division, a charming and brave girl Nina Onilova was well known in the Primorsky Army. Her fighting style was: let the enemy get as close as possible and hit, hit for sure! In all battles, Nina Onilova repelled enemy attacks with fire, and more than once with her platoon she escaped from encirclement.
The soldiers nicknamed Nina Anka the Machine Gunner in honor of the heroine of the film “Chapaev”. Having watched this film even in peacetime, Nina dreamed of becoming a machine gunner. She enthusiastically began studying in a machine gun circle in Odessa and graduated with “excellent” marks.
From the first days of the War, Nina was eager to go to the front. She was not taken immediately, but she ended up in the Chapaev division, the same division in which she fought during the years Civil War legendary Anka.
At first, Nina held the position of company medical instructor. Once during a battle, she herself replaced a killed machine gunner and fired accurately at the advancing fascists. After that incident, Onilova turned to the regiment commander with a request to transfer her to a machine gun platoon. Soon she led the machine-gun crew. Near Odessa, Nina was wounded, but very soon returned to her native division, which was then fighting near Sevastopol.
In the spring of 1942, in a letter to actress V. Myasnikova, who played the role of Anka the machine gunner in the film “Chapaev,” Nina Onilova wrote about herself: |
“I am a stranger to you, comrade, and you will forgive me for this letter. But from the very beginning of the war I wanted to write to you and get to know you. I know that you are not the same Anka, not the real Chapaev machine gunner. But you played like a real one, and I always envied you. I dreamed of becoming a machine gunner and fighting just as bravely. When the war happened, I was already ready, I passed machine gun training with an “excellent” mark. I got there - what a happiness it was for me! - to the Chapaev division, the real one. I defended Odessa with my machine gun, and now I defend Sevastopol. In appearance, of course, I am very weak, small, thin. But I’ll tell you the truth: my hand never wavered. At first I was still afraid. And then everything passed... When you defend your dear, native land and your family (I have no family of origin, and therefore all the people are my family), then you become very brave and do not understand what cowardice is.” |
This letter remained unfinished. Nina wrote it in an underground Sevastopol hospital, where she was after being seriously wounded. The wound turned out to be fatal.
Nina Andreevna Onilova was posthumously awarded h recognition of the Hero of the Soviet Union. She was also awarded the Orders of Lenin and the Red Banner. The name of Nina Onilova was given to the Sevastopol garment factory and streets in Odessa and Sevastopol.
Pilot
Thousands of women and girls fought during the Great Patriotic War in the USSR Air Force. Of the three women's air regiments formed during the War, the most famous was the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment. The Nazis nicknamed the female pilots of the regiment “night witches.”
It is about these brave girl pilots that the feature film “Night Witches in the Sky” is told, filmed in 1981 at the Maxim Gorky Film Studio by director and former pilot, flight commander of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment Evgenia Zhigulenko.
Evgenia Andreevna Zhigulenko was born in Krasnodar, studied at the Airship Construction Institute (Moscow Aviation Technology Institute), and attended the pilot school at the Moscow Aero Club. In 1942, Evgenia Andreevna graduated from navigator courses at the Military Aviation School pilots and pilot improvement courses.
Zhigulenko fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War since May 1942. She took part in battles in the North Caucasus, Kuban, Taman Peninsula, Belarus, Poland, and Germany.
In award documents, Evgenia Zhigulenko is described as the best shooter-bombardier of the regiment, who has excellent knowledge of navigation and flies in difficult weather conditions, while maintaining calm and restraint.
This text is compiled on the basis of the diary entries of Vladimir Ivanovich Trunin, about whom we have already told our readers more than once. This information is unique in that it is transmitted first-hand, from a tanker who rode a tank throughout the war.
Before the Great Patriotic War, women did not serve in units of the Red Army. But they often “served” at border outposts together with their border guard husbands.
The fate of these women with the advent of the war was tragic: most of them died, only a few managed to survive in those terrible days. But I’ll tell you about this separately later...
By August 1941, it became obvious that there was no way to do without women.
Women medical workers were the first to serve in the Red Army: medical battalions (medical battalions), MPG (field mobile hospitals), EG (evacuation hospitals) and sanitary echelons, in which young nurses, doctors and orderlies served, were deployed. Then military commissars began to recruit signalmen, telephone operators, and radio operators into the Red Army. It got to the point that almost all anti-aircraft units were staffed by girls and young unmarried women aged 18 to 25 years. Women's aviation regiments began to form. By 1943, they served in the Red Army different time from 2 to 2.5 million girls and women.
Military commissars drafted the healthiest, most educated, most beautiful girls and young women into the army. All of them showed themselves very well: they were brave, very persistent, resilient, reliable fighters and commanders, and were awarded military orders and medals for the bravery and bravery shown in battle.
For example, Colonel Valentina Stepanovna Grizodubova, Hero of the Soviet Union, commanded a long-range aviation bomber division (LAD). It was her 250 IL4 bombers that forced her to capitulate in July-August 1944 Finland.
About girls anti-aircraft gunners
Under any bombing, under any shelling, they remained at their guns. When the troops of the Don, Stalingrad and Southwestern fronts closed the encirclement ring around enemy groups in Stalingrad, the Germans tried to organize an air bridge from the territory of Ukraine they occupied to Stalingrad. For this purpose, the entire German military transport air fleet was transferred to Stalingrad. Our Russian female anti-aircraft gunners organized an anti-aircraft screen. In two months they shot down 500 three-engine German Junkers 52 aircraft.
In addition, they shot down another 500 aircraft of other types. The German invaders had never known such a defeat anywhere in Europe.
Night Witches
The women's night bomber regiment of Guard Lieutenant Colonel Evdokia Bershanskaya, flying single-engine U-2 aircraft, bombed German troops on the Kerch Peninsula in 1943 and 1944. And later in 1944-45. fought on the first Belorussian front, supporting the troops of Marshal Zhukov and the troops of the 1st Army of the Polish Army.
The U-2 aircraft (from 1944 - Po-2, in honor of the designer N. Polikarpov) flew at night. They were based 8-10 km from the front line. They needed a small runway, only 200 meters. During the night in the battles for the Kerch Peninsula, they made 10-12 sorties. The U2 carried up to 200 kg of bombs at a distance of up to 100 km to the German rear. . During the night, they each dropped up to 2 tons of bombs and incendiary ampoules on German positions and fortifications. They approached the target with the engine turned off, silently: the plane had good aerodynamic properties: the U-2 could glide from a height of 1 kilometer to a distance of 10 to 20 kilometers. It was difficult for the Germans to shoot them down. I myself saw many times how German anti-aircraft gunners drove heavy machine guns across the sky, trying to find the silent U2.
Now the Polish gentlemen do not remember how Russian beautiful pilots in the winter of 1944 dropped weapons, ammunition, food, medicine to the citizens of Poland who rebelled in Warsaw against the German fascists...
A Russian girl pilot named White Lily fought on the Southern Front near Melitopol and in the men’s fighter regiment. It was impossible to shoot it down in an air battle. A flower was painted on board her fighter - a white lily.
One day the regiment was returning from a combat mission, White Lily was flying at the rear - only the most experienced pilots are given such an honor.
A German Me-109 fighter was guarding her, hiding in a cloud. He fired a burst at White Lily and disappeared into the cloud again. Wounded, she turned the plane around and rushed after the German. She never returned back... After the war, her remains were accidentally discovered by local boys when they were catching grass snakes in a mass grave in the village of Dmitrievka, Shakhtarsky district, Donetsk region.
Miss Pavlichenko
In the Primorsky Army, one of the men - sailors - fought - a girl - a sniper. Lyudmila Pavlichenko. By July 1942, Lyudmila had already killed 309 German soldiers and officers (including 36 enemy snipers).
Also in 1942, she was sent with a delegation to Canada and the United States 
States. During the trip, she received a reception from the President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt. Later, Eleanor Roosevelt invited Lyudmila Pavlichenko on a trip around the country. American country singer Woody Guthrie wrote the song “Miss Pavlichenko” about her.
In 1943, Pavlichenko was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
“For Zina Tusnolobova!”
Regimental medical instructor (nurse) Zina Tusnolobova fought in a rifle regiment on the Kalinin Front near Velikiye Luki.
She walked in the first chain with the soldiers, bandaged the wounded. In February 1943, in the battle for the Gorshechnoye station in the Kursk region, trying to help a wounded platoon commander, she herself was seriously wounded: her legs were broken. At this time, the Germans launched a counterattack. Tusnolobova tried to pretend to be dead, but one of the Germans noticed her and tried to finish off the nurse with blows from her boots and butt.
At night, a nurse showing signs of life was discovered by a reconnaissance group, transferred to the location of Soviet troops, and on the third day taken to a field hospital. Her hands and lower legs were frostbitten and had to be amputated. She left the hospital wearing prosthetics and with prosthetic arms. But she didn’t lose heart.
I've recovered. Got married. She gave birth to three children and raised them. True, her mother helped her raise her children. She died in 1980 at the age of 59.
Zinaida’s letter was read to the soldiers in the units before the storming of Polotsk:
Avenge me! Avenge my native Polotsk!
May this letter reach the hearts of each of you. This is written by a man whom the Nazis deprived of everything - happiness, health, youth. I am 23 years old. For 15 months now I have been confined to a hospital bed. I now have neither arms nor legs. The Nazis did this.
I was a chemical laboratory assistant. When the war broke out, she voluntarily went to the front along with other Komsomol members. Here I took part in battles, carried out the wounded. For the removal of 40 soldiers along with their weapons, the government awarded me the Order of the Red Star. In total, I carried 123 wounded soldiers and commanders from the battlefield.
In the last battle, when I rushed to help the wounded platoon commander, I was also wounded, both legs were broken. The Nazis launched a counterattack. There was no one to pick me up. I pretended to be dead. A fascist approached me. He kicked me in the stomach, then began hitting me on the head and face with the rifle butt...
And now I am disabled. I recently learned to write. I am writing this letter with a stump right hand, which is cut off above the elbow. They made me prosthetics, and maybe I will learn to walk. If only I could pick up a machine gun just one more time to get even with the Nazis for their blood. For the torment, for my distorted life!
Russian people! Soldiers! I was your comrade, I walked with you in the same row. Now I can't fight anymore. And I ask you: take revenge! Remember and do not spare the damned fascists. Exterminate them like mad dogs. Avenge them for me, for hundreds of thousands of Russian slaves driven into German slavery. And let every girl’s burning tear, like a drop of molten lead, incinerate one more German.
My friends! When I was in a hospital in Sverdlovsk, Komsomol members of a Ural plant, who took patronage over me, built five tanks at an inopportune time and named them after me. The knowledge that these tanks are now beating the Nazis gives great relief to my torment...
It's very difficult for me. At twenty-three years old, to find myself in the position in which I found myself... Eh! Not even a tenth of what I dreamed of, what I strived for has been done... But I don’t lose heart. I believe in myself, I believe in my strength, I believe in you, my dears! I believe that the Motherland will not leave me. I live in hope that my grief will not remain unavenged, that the Germans will pay dearly for my torment, for the suffering of my loved ones.
And I ask you, dear ones: when you go on the assault, remember me!
Remember - and let each of you kill at least one fascist!
Zina Tusnolobova, Guard Sergeant Major of the Medical Service.
Moscow, 71, 2nd Donskoy proezd, 4-a, Institute of Prosthetics, ward 52.
Newspaper “Forward to the Enemy”, May 13, 1944.
Tankers
A tank driver has a very hard job: loading shells, collecting and repairing broken tracks, working with a shovel, crowbar, sledgehammer, carrying logs. And most often under enemy fire.
In the 220th T-34 Tank Brigade we had Lieutenant Valya Krikalyova as a mechanic-driver on the Leningrad Front. In the battle, a German anti-tank gun smashed the track of her tank. Valya jumped out of the tank and began to repair the caterpillar. The German machine gunner stitched it diagonally across the chest. Her comrades did not have time to cover her. Thus, a wonderful tank girl passed away into eternity. We, tankers from the Leningrad Front, still remember it.
On the Western Front in 1941, the tank company commander, Captain Oktyabrsky, fought in a T-34. He died the death of the brave in August 1941. The young wife Maria Oktyabrskaya, who remained behind the lines, decided to take revenge on the Germans for the death of her husband.
She sold her house, all her property and sent a letter to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich with a request to allow her to use the proceeds to buy a T-34 tank and take revenge on the Germans for the tankman husband they killed:
Moscow, Kremlin To the Chairman of the State Defense Committee. Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
Dear Joseph Vissarionovich!
My husband, regimental commissar Ilya Fedotovich Oktyabrsky, died in the battles for the Motherland. For his death, for the death of everyone Soviet people, tortured by fascist barbarians, I want to take revenge on the fascist dogs, for which I deposited all my personal savings - 50,000 rubles - into the state bank to build a tank. I ask you to name the tank “Battle Friend” and send me to the front as the driver of this tank. I have a specialty as a driver, I have excellent command of a machine gun, and I am a Voroshilov marksman.
I send you warm greetings and wish you good health for many, many years to come, to the fear of your enemies and to the glory of our Motherland.
OKTYABRSKAYA Maria Vasilievna.
Tomsk, Belinskogo, 31
Stalin ordered Maria Oktyabrskaya to be accepted into the Ulyanovsk Tank School, trained, and given a T-34 tank. After graduating from college, Maria was awarded military rank technical lieutenant driver.
She was sent to that section of the Kalinin Front where her husband fought.
On January 17, 1944, near the Krynki station in the Vitebsk region, the left sloth of the “Battle Girlfriend” tank was destroyed by a shell. Mechanic Oktyabrskaya tried to repair the damage under enemy fire, but a fragment of a mine that exploded nearby seriously wounded her in the eye.
She underwent surgery in a field hospital, and then was taken by plane to a front-line hospital, but the wound turned out to be too severe, and she died in March 1944.
Katya Petlyuk is one of nineteen women whose gentle hands drove tanks towards the enemy. Katya was the commander of the T-60 light tank on the Southwestern Front west of Stalingrad.
Katya Petlyuk received the T-60 light tank. For convenience in battle, each vehicle had its own name. The names of the tanks were all impressive: “Eagle”, “Falcon”, “Grozny”, “Slava”, and on the turret of the tank that Katya Petlyuk received there was an unusual inscription – “Malyutka”.
The tankers chuckled: “We’ve already hit the nail on the head – the little one in the Malyutka.”
Her tank was connected. She walked behind the T-34, and if one of them was knocked out, then she would approach the knocked-out tank in her T-60 and help the tankers, deliver spare parts, and act as a liaison. The fact is that not all T-34s had radio stations.
Only many years after the war, senior sergeant from the 56th Tank Brigade Katya Petlyuk learned the story of the birth of her tank: it turns out that it was built with money from Omsk preschool children, who, wanting to help the Red Army, donated their savings for toys to the construction of a combat vehicle and dolls. In a letter to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, they asked to name the tank “Malyutka”. Omsk preschoolers collected 160,886 rubles...
A couple of years later, Katya was already leading the T-70 tank into battle (I still had to part with the Malyutka). She took part in the battle for Stalingrad, and then as part of the Don Front in the encirclement and defeat of Nazi troops. Participated in the battle on Kursk Bulge, liberated left-bank Ukraine. She was seriously wounded - at the age of 25 she became a disabled person of the 2nd group.
After the war, she lived in Odessa. Having removed her officer's shoulder straps, she studied to be a lawyer and worked as the head of the registry office.
She was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Patriotic War, II degree, and medals.
Many years later, Marshal of the Soviet Union I. I. Yakubovsky, the former commander of the 91st separate tank brigade, would write in the book “Earth on Fire”: “... in general, it is difficult to measure how much the heroism of a person elevates. They say about him that this is courage special order. Ekaterina Petlyuk, a participant in the Battle of Stalingrad, certainly possessed it.”
Based on materials from the diary entries of Vladimir Ivanovich Trunin and the Internet.
The Great Patriotic War - known and unknown: historical memory and modernity: materials of the international. scientific conf. (Moscow - Kolomna, May 6–8, 2015) / rep. editor: Yu. A. Petrov; Institute grew. history of Russia acad. sciences; Ross. ist. about; Chinese history o-vo, etc. - M.: [IRI RAS], 2015.
June 22, 1941 is the day on which the countdown to the Great Patriotic War began. This is the day that divided the life of mankind into two parts: peaceful (pre-war) and war. This is a day that made everyone think about what he chooses: to submit to the enemy or fight him. And each person decided this question himself, consulting only with his conscience.
Archival documents indicate that the absolute majority of the population of the Soviet Union made the only correct decision: to devote all their strength to the fight against fascism, to defend their Motherland, their family and friends. Men and women, regardless of age and nationality, non-party members and members of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Komsomol members and non-Komsomol members, became the Army of volunteers that lined up to apply for enlistment in the Red Army.
Let us recall that in Art. The 13th Law on General Military Duty, adopted by the IV session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 1, 1939, gave the People's Commissariats of Defense and Navy the right to recruit women into the army and navy who have medical, veterinary and special-technical training, as well as attract them to training camps. In wartime, women with the specified training could be drafted into the army and navy to perform auxiliary and special service.
After the announcement of the start of the war, women, citing this article, went to party and Komsomol organizations, to military commissariats and there persistently sought to be sent to the front. Among the volunteers who submitted applications in the first days of the war to be sent to the active army, up to 50% of the applications were from women. Women also went and signed up for the people's militia.
Reading the applications of girl volunteers that were submitted in the first days of the war, we see that for young people the war seemed completely different from what it turned out to be in reality. Most of them were confident that the enemy would be defeated in the near future, and therefore everyone sought to quickly participate in its destruction. The military registration and enlistment offices at this time mobilized the population, following the instructions received, and refused those who were under 18 years old, refused those who were not trained in military craft, and also refused girls and women until further notice. What did we know and know about them? There are many about some, and about most of them we talk about “defenders of the homeland,” volunteers.
It was about them, about those who went to defend their Motherland, that the front-line poet K. Vanshenkin later wrote that they were “knights without fear or reproach.” This applies to men and women. This can be said about them in the words of M. Aliger:
Everyone had their own war,
Your path forward, your battlefields,
And everyone was himself in everything,
And everyone had the same goal.
The historiography of the Great Patriotic War is rich in collections of documents and materials about this spiritual impulse of women of the USSR. A huge number of articles, monographs, collective works and memoirs have been written and published about the work of women during the war in the rear, about exploits at the fronts, in the underground, in partisan detachments operating in the temporarily occupied territory of the Soviet Union. But life testifies that not everything, not about everyone, and not everything has been said and analyzed. Many documents and problems were “closed” to historians in past years. Currently, there is access to documents that are not only little-known, but also to documents that require an objective approach to study and impartial analysis. It is not always easy to do this due to the existing stereotype in relation to one or another phenomenon or person.
The problem “Soviet women during the Great Patriotic War” has been and remains in the field of view of historians, political scientists, writers and journalists. They wrote and write about women warriors, about women who replaced men in the rear, about mothers, less about those who took care of evacuated children, who returned from the front with orders and were embarrassed to wear them, etc. And then the question arises: why ? After all, back in the spring of 1943, the Pravda newspaper stated, referring to the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, that “never before in all past history a woman did not participate as selflessly in the defense of her Motherland as during the Patriotic War of the Soviet people.”
The Soviet Union was the only state during World War II in which women took a direct part in the fighting. From 800 thousand to 1 million women fought at the front in different periods, 80 thousand of them were Soviet officers. This was due to two factors. Firstly, an unprecedented rise in the patriotism of young people, who were eager to fight the enemy who had attacked their homeland. Secondly, difficult situation prevailing on all fronts. Losses of Soviet troops on initial war led to the fact that in the spring of 1942 there was a mass mobilization of women to serve in the active army and rear units. Based on the resolution of the State Defense Committee (GKO), mass mobilizations of women took place on March 23, April 13 and 23, 1942 to serve in the air defense, communications, internal security forces, on military roads, in the Navy and Air Force, in the signal troops.
Healthy girls aged at least 18 years were subject to mobilization. The mobilization was carried out under the control of the Komsomol Central Committee and local Komsomol organizations. Everything was taken into account: education (preferably at least 5th grade), membership in the Komsomol, state of health, absence of children. The majority of the girls were volunteers. True, there were cases of reluctance to serve in the Red Army. When this was discovered at the assembly points, the girls were sent home to their place of conscription. M.I. Kalinin, recalling in the summer of 1945 how girls were drafted into the Red Army, noted that “the female youth who participated in the war... were taller than average men, there’s nothing special... because you were selected from many millions . They didn’t choose men, they threw a net and mobilized everyone, they took everyone away... I think that the best part of our female youth went to the front...”
There are no exact figures on the number of conscripts. But it is known that over 550 thousand women became warriors only at the call of the Komsomol. Over 300 thousand patriotic women were drafted into the air defense forces (this is over ¼ of all fighters). They received a specialty through the Red Cross and began serving in the military. medical institutions sanitary service of the Red Army 300 thousand Oshin nurses, 300 thousand nurses, 300 thousand nurses, over 500 thousand air defense sanitary workers. In May 1942, the State Defense Committee adopted a decree on the mobilization of 25 thousand women in the Navy. On November 3, the Central Committee of the Komsomol carried out the selection of Komsomol and non-Komsomol members of the formation of the women's volunteer rifle brigade, a reserve regiment and the Ryazan Infantry School. The total number of people mobilized there was 10,898. On December 15, the brigade, reserve regiment and courses began normal training. During the war, five mobilizations were held among communist women.
Not all women, of course, took direct part in the fighting. Many served in various rear services: economic, medical, headquarters, etc. However, a significant number of them directly participated in the hostilities. At the same time, the range of activities of women warriors was quite diverse: they took part in raids of reconnaissance and sabotage groups and partisan detachments, were medical instructors, signalmen, anti-aircraft gunners, snipers, machine gunners, drivers of cars and tanks. Women served in aviation. These were pilots, navigators, gunners, radio operators, and armed forces. At the same time, female aviators fought both in regular “male” aviation regiments and in separate “female” ones.
During the Great Patriotic War, women's combat formations appeared for the first time in the Armed Forces of our country. Three aviation regiments were formed from female volunteers: the 46th Guards Night Bomber, the 125th Guards Bomber, the 586th Air Defense Fighter Regiment; Separate women's volunteer rifle brigade, Separate women's reserve rifle regiment, Central women's sniper school, Separate women's company of sailors, etc. The 101st long-range air regiment was commanded by Hero of the Soviet Union B.S. Grizodubova. The Central Women's Sniper Training School provided the front with 1,061 snipers and 407 sniper instructors. Graduates of this school destroyed over 11,280 enemy soldiers and officers during the war. The youth units of Vsevobuch trained 220 thousand female snipers and signalmen.
Located near Moscow, the 1st Separate Women's Reserve Regiment trained motorists and snipers, machine gunners and junior commanders of combat units. There were 2899 women on staff. 20 thousand women served in the Special Moscow Air Defense Army. Documents in the archives of the Russian Federation speak about how difficult this service is.
The largest representation of participants in the Great Patriotic War was among female doctors. Of the total number of doctors in the Red Army, 41% were women, among surgeons there were 43.5%. It was estimated that female medical instructors of rifle companies, medical battalions, and artillery batteries helped over 72% of the wounded and about 90% of sick soldiers return to duty. Women doctors served in all branches of the military - in aviation and the marine corps, on warships of the Black Sea Fleet, the Northern Fleet, the Caspian and Dnieper flotillas, in floating naval hospitals and ambulance trains. Together with horsemen, they went on deep raids behind enemy lines and were in partisan detachments. With the infantry they reached Berlin and took part in the storming of the Reichstag. For special courage and heroism, 17 female doctors were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
A sculptural monument in Kaluga reminds of the feat of female military doctors. In the park on Kirov Street, a front-line nurse in a raincoat, with a sanitary bag over her shoulder, stands at full height on a high pedestal.
Monument to military nurses in Kaluga
During the war, the city of Kaluga was the center of numerous hospitals that treated and returned tens of thousands of soldiers and commanders to duty. In this city there are always flowers at the monument.
There is practically no mention in the literature that during the war years, about 20 women became tank crews, three of whom graduated from the country’s tank schools. Among them are I.N. Levchenko, who commanded a group of T-60 light tanks, E.I. Kostrikova, the commander of a tank platoon, and at the end of the war, the commander of a tank company. And the only woman who fought on the IS-2 heavy tank was A.L. Boykova. Four female tank crews participated Battle of Kursk summer 1943
Irina Nikolaevna Levchenko and Evgenia Sergeevna Kostrikova (daughter of the Soviet statesman and political figure S.M. Kirov)
I would like to note that among our female Heroes there is the only foreign woman - 18-year-old Anela Krzywoń, a shooter of a female company of machine gunners of the female infantry battalion of the 1st Polish Infantry Division of the Polish Army. The title was awarded posthumously in November 1943.
Anelya Kzhivon, who has Polish roots, was born in the village of Sadovye, Ternopil region Western Ukraine. When the war began, the family was evacuated to Kansk, Krasnoyarsk Territory. Here the girl worked in a factory. I tried several times to volunteer for the front. In 1943, Anelya was enlisted as a rifleman in a company of machine gunners of the 1st Polish Division named after Tadeusz Kosciuszko. The company guarded the division headquarters. In October 1943, the division fought offensive battles in the Mogilev region. On October 12, during the next German airstrike on the division’s positions, rifleman Krzywoń served at one of the posts, hiding in a small trench. Suddenly she saw that the staff car had caught fire due to the explosion. Knowing that it contained maps and other documents, Anelya rushed to save them. In the covered body she saw two soldiers, stunned by the blast wave. Anelya pulled them out, and then, choking in the smoke, burning her face and hands, began throwing folders with documents out of the car. She did this until the car exploded. By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of November 11, 1943, she was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. (Photo courtesy of the Krasnoyarsk Museum of Local Lore. Natalya Vladimirovna Barsukova, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of History of Russia, Siberian Federal University)
200 women warriors were awarded Orders of Glory II and III degrees. Four women became full Cavaliers Glory. We almost never last years did not call them by name. In the year of the 70th anniversary of the Victory, we will repeat their names. These are Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Zhurkina (Kiek), Matryona Semenovna Necheporchukova, Danuta Yurgio Staniliene, Nina Pavlovna Petrova. Over 150 thousand women soldiers were awarded orders and medals of the Soviet state.
The figures, even if not always accurate and complete, that were given above, the facts of military events indicate that history has never known such a massive participation of women in the armed struggle for the Motherland, as was shown by Soviet women during the Great Patriotic War. Let's not forget that women also showed themselves heroically and selflessly under the most difficult conditions of occupation, standing up to fight the enemy.
There were only about 90 thousand partisans behind enemy lines at the end of 1941. The issue of numbers is a special issue, and we refer to official published data. By the beginning of 1944, 90% of the partisans were men and 9.3% women. The question of the number of female partisans gives a range of figures. According to data from later years (obviously, according to updated data), during the war there were over 1 million partisans in the rear. Women among them accounted for 9.3%, i.e. over 93,000 people. The same source also contains another figure - over 100 thousand women. There is one more feature. The percentage of women in partisan detachments was not the same everywhere. Thus, in units in Ukraine it was 6.1%, in the occupied regions of the RSFSR - from 6% to 10%, in the Bryansk region - 15.8% and in Belarus - 16%.
Our country was proud during the war years (and now is also proud) of such heroines of the Soviet people as partisans Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Lisa Chaikina, Antonina Petrova, Anya Lisitsina, Maria Melentyeva, Ulyana Gromova, Lyuba Shevtsova and others. But many are still unknown or little known due to years of background checks on their identities. Girls - nurses, doctors, and partisan intelligence officers - gained great authority among the partisans. But they were treated with a certain distrust and with great difficulty were allowed to participate in combat operations. At first, the opinion was widespread among partisan detachments that girls could not be demolitions. However, dozens of girls have mastered this difficult task. Among them is Anna Kalashnikova, the leader of a subversive group of a partisan detachment in the Smolensk region. Sofya Levanovich commanded a subversive group of a partisan detachment in the Oryol region and derailed 17 enemy trains. Ukrainian partisan Dusya Baskina had 9 enemy trains derailed. Who remembers, who knows these names? And during the war, their names were known not only in the partisan detachments, but the occupiers knew and feared them.
Where partisan detachments operated, destroying the Nazis, there was an order from General von Reichenau, who demanded that in order to destroy the partisans “... use all means. All captured partisans of both sexes in military uniform or civilian clothes shall be publicly hanged.” It is known that the fascists were especially afraid of women and girls - residents of villages and hamlets in the area where the partisans operated. In their letters home, which fell into the hands of the Red Army, the occupiers wrote frankly that “women and girls act like the most seasoned warriors... In this regard, we would have to learn a lot.” In another letter, Chief Corporal Anton Prost asked in 1942: “How much longer will we have to fight this kind of war? After all, we, a combat unit (Western Front p/p 2244/B. - N.P.) are opposed here by the entire civilian population, including women and children!..”
And as if confirming this idea, the German newspaper “Deutsche Allheimeine Zeitung” dated May 22, 1943 stated: “Even seemingly harmless women picking berries and mushrooms, peasant women heading to the city are partisan scouts...” Risking their lives, the partisans carried out tasks .
According to official data, as of February 1945, 7,800 female partisans and underground fighters received the “Partisan of the Patriotic War” medal of II and III degrees. 27 partisans and underground women received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 22 of them were awarded posthumously. We cannot say with certainty that these are accurate numbers. The number of award recipients is much larger, since the process of awarding, or more precisely, considering repeated nominations for awards, continued into the 90s. An example could be the fate of Vera Voloshina.
Vera Voloshina
The girl was in the same reconnaissance group as Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Both of them went on a mission for the intelligence department of the Western Front on the same day. Voloshina was wounded and fell behind her group. She was captured. Like Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, she was executed on November 29. Voloshina’s fate remained unknown for a long time. Thanks to the search work of journalists, the circumstances of her captivity and death were established. By Presidential Decree Russian Federation in 1993, V. Voloshina was (posthumously) awarded the title of Hero of Russia.
Vera Voloshina
The press is often interested in numbers: how many feats have been accomplished. In this case, they often refer to the figures taken into account by the Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement (TSSHPD).
But what kind of accurate accounting can we talk about when underground organizations arose on the ground without any instructions from the TsShPD. As an example, we can cite the world-famous Komsomol youth underground organization “Young Guard”, which operated in the city of Krasnodon in the Donbass. There are still disputes about its numbers and its composition. The number of its members ranges from 70 to 150 people.
There was a time when it was believed that the larger the organization, the more effective it was. And few people thought about how a large underground youth organization could operate under occupation without revealing its actions. Unfortunately, a number of underground organizations are waiting for their researchers, because little or almost nothing has been written about them. But the fates of underground women are hidden in them.
In the fall of 1943, Nadezhda Troyan and her fighting friends managed to carry out the sentence pronounced by the Belarusian people.
Elena Mazanik, Nadezhda Troyan, Maria Osipova
For this feat, which entered the annals of the history of Soviet intelligence, Nadezhda Troyan, Elena Mazanik and Maria Osipova were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Their names are usually not remembered often.
Unfortunately, our historical memory has a number of features, and one of them is forgetfulness of the past or “inattention” to facts, dictated by various circumstances. We know about the feat of A. Matrosov, but we hardly know that on November 25, 1942, during the battle in the village of Lomovochi, Minsk Region, partisan R.I. Shershneva (1925) covered the embrasure of a German bunker, becoming the only woman (according to others according to data - one of two) who accomplished a similar feat. Unfortunately, in the history of the partisan movement there are pages where there is only a listing of military operations, the number of partisans who participated in it, but, as they say, “behind the scenes of events” remain the majority of those who specifically took part in the implementation of partisan raids. It is not possible to name everyone right now. They, the rank and file - living and dead - are rarely remembered, despite the fact that they live somewhere near us.
Behind the bustle Everyday life In the last few decades, our historical memory of the everyday life of the past war has somewhat faded. Victory’s privates are rarely written or remembered. As a rule, they remember only those who accomplished a feat already recorded in the history of the Great Patriotic War, less and less, and even then in a faceless form about those who were next to them in the same formation, in the same battle.
Rimma Ivanovna Shershneva is a Soviet partisan who covered the embrasure of an enemy bunker with her body. (according to some reports, the same feat was repeated by medical service lieutenant Nina Aleksandrovna Bobyleva, a doctor of a partisan detachment operating in the Narva region).
Back in 1945, during the beginning of the demobilization of girl warriors, words were heard that little was written about them, girl warriors, during the war years, and now, in peacetime, they might be completely forgotten. On July 26, 1945, the Central Committee of the Komsomol hosted a meeting of girls warriors who had completed their service in the Red Army with the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR M.I. Kalinin. A transcript of this meeting has been preserved, which is called “a conversation between M.I. Kalinin and girl warriors.” I will not retell its contents. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in one of the speeches of the Hero of the Soviet Union, pilot N. Meklin (Kravtsova), the question was raised about the need to “popularize the heroic deeds and nobility of our women.”
Speaking on behalf and on behalf of the warrior girls, N. Meklin (Kravtsova) said what many were talking and thinking about, she said what they are still talking about. In her speech there was, as it were, a sketch of a plan that had not yet been told about girls, women warriors. We must admit that what was said 70 years ago is still relevant today.
Concluding her speech, N. Meklin (Kravtsova) drew attention to the fact that “almost nothing has been written or shown about girls - Heroes of the Patriotic War. Something has been written, it is written about partisan girls: Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Liza Chaikina, about the Krasnodonites. Nothing has been written about the girls of the Red Army and Navy. But this, perhaps, would be pleasant for those who fought, it would be useful for those who did not fight, and it would be important for our posterity and history. Why not create a documentary film, by the way, the Komsomol Central Committee has long been thinking about doing this, in which to reflect women’s combat training, as, for example, during the defense of Leningrad, to reflect best women working in hospitals, show snipers, traffic police girls, etc. In my opinion, literature and art for that matter owe a debt to warrior girls. That's basically all I wanted to say."
Natalya Fedorovna Meklin (Kravtsova)
These proposals were partially or not fully implemented. Time has put other problems on the agenda, and much of what the girl warriors proposed in July 1945 is waiting for its authors now.
The war separated some people in different directions, and brought others closer together. During the war there were separations and meetings. During the war there was love, there was betrayal, everything happened. But the war united in its fields men and women of different ages, mostly young and healthy people who wanted to live and love, despite the fact that death was at every turn. And no one condemned anyone during the war for this. But when the war ended and demobilized women soldiers began to return to their homeland, on whose chests there were orders, medals and stripes about wounds, the civilian population often threw insults at them, calling them “PPZh” (field wife), or poisonous questions: “Why did you receive awards? How many husbands have you had? etc.
In 1945, this became widespread and even among demobilized men caused widespread protest and complete powerlessness on how to deal with it. The Central Committee of the Komsomol began to receive letters asking them to “put things in order in this matter.” The Komsomol Central Committee outlined a plan on the issue raised - what to do? It noted that “...we do not always and not everywhere sufficiently propagate the exploits of girls among the people; we tell the population and young people little about the enormous contribution made by girls and women to our victory over fascism.”
It should be noted that then plans were drawn up, lectures were edited, but the urgency of the issue practically did not decrease for many years. The girl warriors were embarrassed to put on their orders and medals; they took them off their tunics and hid them in boxes. And when their children grew up, the children sorted out expensive awards and played with them, often not knowing why their mothers received them. If during the Great Patriotic War women warriors were talked about in the reports of the Sovinformburo, written in newspapers, and posters were published where there was a woman warrior, then the further the country moved away from the events of 1941-1945, the less often this topic was heard. A certain interest in it appeared only in the run-up to March 8th. Researchers tried to find an explanation for this, but we cannot agree with their interpretation for a number of reasons.
There is an opinion that “the starting point in the policy of the Soviet leadership in relation to women’s memory of the war” is the speech of M.I. Kalinin in July 1945 at a meeting at the Komsomol Central Committee with girl soldiers demobilized from the Red Army and Navy. The speech was called “Glorious Daughters of the Soviet People.” In it, M.I. Kalinin raised the question of adapting demobilized girls to peaceful life, finding their own professions, etc. And at the same time he advised: “Don’t be arrogant about your future practical work. Don’t talk about your merits, let them talk about you - it’s better.” With reference to the work of the German researcher B. Fieseler “Woman at War: The Unwritten History”, these above words of M.I. Kalinin were interpreted by the Russian researcher O.Yu. Nikonova as a recommendation “for demobilized women not to brag about their merits.” Perhaps the German researcher did not understand the meaning of Kalinin’s words, and the Russian researcher, while building her “concept,” did not bother to read the publication of M.I. Kalinin’s speech in Russian.
Currently, attempts are being made (and quite successfully) to reconsider the problem of women's participation in the Great Patriotic War, in particular, what motivated them when they applied for enlistment in the Red Army. The term “mobilized patriotism” appeared. At the same time, a number of problems or incompletely explored subjects remain. If women warriors are written about more often; especially about the Heroes of the Soviet Union, about women at the labor front, about women at the rear, there are fewer and fewer generalizing works. Obviously, it is forgotten that it was possible to “participate directly in the war, and one could participate by working in industry, in all possible military and logistical institutions.” In the USSR, when assessing the contribution made by Soviet women to the defense of the Motherland, they were guided by the words Secretary General The Central Committee of the CPSU L.I. Brezhnev, who said: “The image of a female fighter with a rifle in her hands at the helm of an airplane, the image of a nurse or a doctor with shoulder straps will live in our memory as a shining example of dedication and patriotism.” Correctly, figuratively said, but... where are the women of the home front? What is their role? Let us recall that what M.I. Kalinin wrote about in the article “On the moral character of our people,” published in 1945, directly applies to the women of the home front: “... everything previous pales before the great epic of the current war, before the heroism and the sacrifice of Soviet women, showing civic valor, endurance in the loss of loved ones and enthusiasm in the struggle with such strength and, I would say, majesty, which have never been seen in the past.”
About the civil valor of women on the home front in 1941-1945. one can say in the words of M. Isakovsky, dedicated to “Russian Woman” (1945):
...Can you really tell me about this?
What years did you live in?
What an immeasurable burden
It fell on women's shoulders!..
But without facts, it is difficult for the current generation to understand. Let us remind you that under the slogan “Everything for the front, everything for victory!” All the teams of the Soviet rear worked. Sovinformburo in the most difficult time of 1941-1942. in its reports, along with reports about the exploits of Soviet soldiers, it also reported about the heroic deeds of home front workers. In connection with the departure to the front, to the people's militia, to the destruction battalions, the number of men in the Russian national economy by the fall of 1942 fell from 22.2 million to 9.5 million.
The men who went to the front were replaced by women and teenagers.
Among them were 550 thousand housewives, pensioners, and teenagers. In the food and light industry, the share of women during the war years was 80-95%. In transport, more than 40% (by the summer of 1943) were women. The “All-Russian Book of Memory of 1941-1945” in the review volume contains interesting figures that do not need commentary on the increase in the share of female labor throughout the country, especially in the first two years of the war. Thus, among steam engine operators - from 6% to at the beginning of 1941 to 33% at the end of 1942, compressor operators - from 27% to 44%, metal turners - from 16% to 33%, welders - from 17% to 31%, mechanics - from 3.9 % to 12%.At the end of the war, women of the Russian Federation made up 59% of workers and employees of the republic instead of 41% on the eve of the war.
Up to 70% of women came to work at some enterprises where only men worked before the war. There were no enterprises, workshops, or areas in industry where women did not work; there were no professions that women could not master; the proportion of women in 1945 was 57.2% compared to 38.4% in 1940, and in agriculture- 58.0% in 1945 versus 26.1% in 1940. Among communication workers it reached 69.1% in 1945. The share of women among industrial workers and apprentices in 1945 in the professions of drillers and revolvers reached 70 % (in 1941 it was 48%), and among turners - 34%, against 16.2% in 1941. In the country's 145 thousand Komsomol youth brigades, 48% of the total number of youth were employed by women. Only during the competition for increasing labor productivity, for manufacturing above-plan weapons for the front, more than 25 thousand women were awarded orders and medals of the USSR.
Women warriors and women on the home front began to talk about themselves, their friends, with whom they shared their joys and troubles, years after the end of the war. On the pages of these collections of memoirs, which were published locally and in capital publishing houses, the conversation was primarily about heroic military and labor exploits and very rarely about the everyday difficulties of the war years. And only decades later they began to call a spade a spade and not hesitate to remember what difficulties befell Soviet women and how they had to overcome them.
I would like our compatriots to know the following: May 8, 1965 in the year of the 30th anniversary Great Victory By decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the SR, International Women's Day on March 8 became a holiday non-working day “in commemoration of the outstanding services of Soviet women... in defending the Motherland during the Great Patriotic War, their heroism and dedication at the front and in the rear...”.
Turning to the problem of “Soviet women during the Great Patriotic War,” we understand that the problem is unusually broad and multifaceted and it is impossible to cover everything. Therefore, in the presented article we set one task: to help human memory, so that “the image of a Soviet woman - a patriot, a fighter, a worker, a soldier’s mother” will forever be preserved in the memory of the people.
NOTES
See: Law on General Military Duty, [dated September 1, 1939]. M., 1939. Art. 13.
Is it true. 1943. March 8; Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI). F. M-1. He. 5. D. 245. L. 28.
See: Women of the Great Patriotic War. M., 2014. Section 1: official documents testify.
RGASPI. F. M-1. He. 5. D. 245. L. 28. We quote from the transcript of a meeting at the Komsomol Central Committee with demobilized girl soldiers.
The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945: encyclopedia. M., 1985. P. 269.
RGASPI. F. M-1. He. 53. D. 17. L. 49.
The Great Patriotic War. 1941-1945: encyclopedia. P. 269.
See: Women of the Great Patriotic War.
The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945: encyclopedia. P. 440.
Right there. P.270.
URL: Famhist.ru/Famlrist/shatanovskajl00437ceO.ntm
RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53. D. 13. L. 73.
The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945: encyclopedia. P. 530.
Right there. P.270.
URL: 0ld. Bryanskovi.ru/projects/partisan/events.php?category-35
RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53. D. 13. L. 73–74.
Right there. D. 17. L. 18.
Right there.
Right there. F. M-7. Op. 3. D. 53. L. 148; The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945: encyclopedia. C. 270; URL: http://www.great-country.ra/rabrika_articles/sov_eUte/0007.html
For more details, see: “Young Guard” (Krasnodon) - artistic image and historical reality: collection. documents and materials. M, 2003.
Heroes of the Soviet Union [Electronic resource]: [forum]. URL: PokerStrategy.com
RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 5. D. 245. L. 1–30.
Right there. L. 11.
Right there.
Right there. Op. 32. D. 331. L. 77–78. Emphasis added by the author of the article.
Right there. Op. 5. D. 245. L. 30.
See: Fieseler B. Women at War: The Unwritten History. Berlin, 2002. P. 13; URL: http://7r.net/foram/thread150.html
Kalinin M.I. Selected works. M., 1975. P. 315.
Same place. P. 401.
Right there.
All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945. M., 2005. Review volume. P. 143.
The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945: encyclopedia. P. 270.
All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945. Review volume. P. 143.
RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 3. D. 331 a. L. 63.
Right there. Op. 6. D. 355. L. 73.
Quoted: from: Bolshaya Soviet encyclopedia. 3rd ed. M., 1974. T. 15. P. 617.
CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee. Ed. 8th, add. M., 1978. T 11. P. 509.