How women were dressed during the war. Women in the Great Patriotic War: influence and role, interesting facts

Great Patriotic War - known and unknown: historical memory and modernity: materials of the international. scientific conf. (Moscow - Kolomna, May 6-8, 2015) / ed. editor: Yu. A. Petrov; In-t grew up. history of Ros. acad. sciences; Ros. ist. about; Chinese ist. o-vo and others - M.: [IRI RAN], 2015.

June 22, 1941 is the day from which the countdown of the Great Patriotic War began. This is the day that divided the life of mankind into two parts: peaceful (pre-war) and military. 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 testify that the absolute majority of the population of the Soviet Union made the only right decision: to give all their strength to the fight against fascism, to defend their homeland, their relatives and friends. Men and women, regardless of age and nationality, non-party and members of the CPSU (b), Komsomol and non-Komsomol members became the Army of Volunteers that lined up to apply for enrollment in the Red Army.

Let us recall that Art. The 13th Law on universal conscription, adopted by the IV session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 1, 1939, gave the People's Commissariats of Defense and the Navy the right to recruit women with medical, veterinary and special technical training, as well as invite them to training camps. In wartime, women with this training could be drafted into the army and navy for auxiliary and special service.

After the announcement of the beginning of the war, women, referring to this article, went to the party and Komsomol organizations, to the military commissariats, and there they persistently sought to be sent to the front. Among the volunteers who applied 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 statements of female volunteers that were submitted in the first days of the war, we see that for young people the war seemed completely different than it turned out to be in reality. Most of them were sure that the enemy would be defeated in the near future, and therefore everyone was eager to participate in its destruction as soon as possible. The military registration and enlistment offices at that time carried out the mobilization of 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 do we know and know about them? There are many about some of them, and we are talking about most of them as “defenders of the motherland”, volunteers.

It was about them, about those who left to defend their homeland, that the front-line poet K. Vanshenkin later wrote that they were "knights without fear and 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 way forward, your battlefields,
And everyone was in everything himself,
And everyone had only one goal.

The historiography of the Great Patriotic War is rich in collections of documents and materials about this spiritual impulse of the 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 years 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 about everything, has been said and analyzed. Many documents and problems have been "closed" to historians in past years. At present, there is access to documents that are not only little known, but also documents that require an objective approach to study and their impartial analysis. Doing about is not always easy due to the prevailing stereotype in relation to this or that phenomenon or person.

The problem of "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 female 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 is, why ? After all, back in the spring of 1943, the Pravda newspaper stated, referring to the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, that “never before in all past history has a woman participated so selflessly in the defense of her homeland as in the days of the Patriotic War of the Soviet people.”

The Soviet Union was the only state during the Second World War in which women were directly involved 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 upsurge of patriotism among young people, who were eager to fight the enemy who attacked their homeland. Secondly, the difficult situation prevailing on all fronts. The losses of the Soviet troops in the initial war led to the mass mobilization of women in the spring of 1942 to serve in the army and rear formations. Based on the decision of the State Defense Committee (GKO), mass mobilization of women took place on March 23, April 13 and April 23, 1942 to serve in the air defense forces, communications, internal security, on military highways, in the Navy and the Air Force, in the communications troops.

Healthy girls aged at least 18 were subject to mobilization. The mobilization was carried out under the control of the Komsomol Central Committee and local Komsomol organizations. At the same time, everything was taken into account: education (preferably not lower than 5 classes), membership in the Komsomol, health status, absence of children. Most of the girls were volunteers. True, there were cases of unwillingness to serve in the Red Army. When this was found out at the collection points, the girls were sent home, to the place of their 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 higher than average men, there is nothing special ... because you were selected from many millions . They didn’t choose men, 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 those called. But it is known that only at the call of the Komsomol, more than 550 thousand women became soldiers. Over 300 thousand patriots were drafted into the air defense forces (this is over ¼ of all fighters). Through the Red Cross, 300,000 Oshinsky nurses, 300,000 nurses, 300,000 nurses, and more than 500,000 air defense sanitary troopers received a specialty and came to serve in the military medical institutions of the Red Army sanitary service. In May 1942, a GKO decree was adopted on the mobilization of 25,000 women in the Navy. On November 3, the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League conducted a selection of Komsomol and non-Komsomol women of the formation of a women's volunteer rifle brigade, a reserve regiment and the Ryazan Infantry School. The total number of people mobilized there was 10,898 people. On December 15, the brigade, reserve regiment and courses began their normal studies. During the war years, five mobilizations were carried out among communist women.

Not all women, of course, took a direct part in the hostilities. Many served in various rear services: economic, medical, staff, etc. However, a significant number of them directly participated in the hostilities. At the same time, the range of activities of female soldiers was quite diverse: they took part in raids by 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 men. At the same time, female aviators fought both in the composition of ordinary "male" aviation regiments and separate "female" ones.

During the Great Patriotic War, women's combat formations first appeared in the Armed Forces of our country. Three aviation regiments were formed from female volunteers: the 46th Guards Night Bomber, the 125th Guards Bomber, and the 586th Air Defense Fighter Regiment; A separate women's volunteer rifle brigade, a separate women's reserve rifle regiment, the Central Women's School of Snipers, a 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 School of Sniper Training provided the front with 1,061 snipers and 407 sniper instructors. The graduates of this school destroyed over 11,280 enemy soldiers and officers during the war. In the youth divisions of Vsevobuch, 220 thousand female snipers and signalmen were trained.

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 in the personnel. 20,000 women served in the Special Moscow Air Defense Army. About how difficult this service is, documents in the archives of the Russian Federation speak.

The largest representation of participants in the Great Patriotic War was among women doctors. Of the total number of doctors in the Red Army - 41% were women, among surgeons they were 43.5%. It was estimated that the female medical instructors of rifle companies, medical battalions, and artillery batteries helped over 72% of the wounded and about 90% of the sick soldiers return to duty. Women doctors served in all branches of the military - in aviation and marines, on warships of the Black Sea Fleet, the Northern Fleet, the Caspian and Dnieper flotillas, in floating naval hospitals and ambulance trains. Together with the horsemen, they went into deep raids behind enemy lines, were in partisan detachments. With the infantry they reached Berlin, participated 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, on a high pedestal, a front-line nurse in a raincoat, with a sanitary bag over her shoulder, rises to her full height.

Monument to military nurses in Kaluga

The city of Kaluga during the war years was the focus of numerous hospitals, which cured and returned to service tens of thousands of soldiers and commanders. In this city, there are always flowers near the monument.

There is practically no mention in the literature that during the war years about 20 women became tankmen, three of whom graduated from the country's tank schools. Among them, I.N. Levchenko, who commanded a group of T-60 light tanks, E.I. Kostrikova, commander of a tank platoon, and at the end of the war, 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 in the Battle of Kursk in the summer of 1943.

Irina Nikolaevna Levchenko and Evgenia Sergeevna Kostrikova (daughter of the Soviet statesman and politician S.M. Kirov)

I would like to note that among our female Heroes there is the only female foreigner - 18-year-old Anela Kzhivon, a shooter of the female company of submachine 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 Sadovy, Ternopil region, Western Ukraine. When the war began, the family was evacuated to Kansk, Krasnoyarsk Territory. Here the girl worked in a factory. Several times I tried to go to the front as a volunteer. In 1943, Anelya was enrolled as a shooter in a company of submachine gunners of the 1st Polish division named after Tadeusz Kosciuszko. The company guarded the headquarters of the division. In October 1943, the division fought offensive battles in the Mogilev region. On October 12, during the next German air strike on the positions of the division, the shooter Kzhivon served at one of the posts, hiding in a small trench. Suddenly she saw that the staff car caught fire from the explosion. Knowing that it contained maps and other documents, Anelya rushed to rescue them. In the covered body, she saw two soldiers, stunned by the blast. Anelya pulled them out, and then, suffocating in the smoke, burning her face and hands, she began to throw 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, Candidate of History, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian History, Siberian Federal University)

200 female warriors were awarded Orders of Glory II and III degree. Four women became full Cavaliers of Glory. We almost never called them by name in recent years. In the year of the 70th anniversary of the Victory, we will repeat their names. These are Nadezhda Alexandrovna Zhurkina (Kiek), Matrena Semyonovna Necheporchukova, Danuta Jurgio 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, which were given above, the facts of military events show that history has not yet known such a massive participation of women in the armed struggle for the Motherland, which was shown by Soviet women during the Great Patriotic War. Let's not forget that women also showed themselves heroically and selflessly in the most difficult conditions of the occupation, standing up to fight the enemy.

There were only about 90,000 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 spread in numbers. According to the data of later years (obviously, according to updated data), in total during the war years there were over 1 million partisans in the rear. Women accounted for 9.3% of them, that is, over 93,000 people. The same source also has another figure - over 100,000 women. There is one more feature. The percentage of women in partisan detachments was not the same everywhere. Thus, in the detachments 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 is also proud now) of such heroines of the Soviet people as partisans Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Liza Chaikina, Antonina Petrova, Anya Lisitsina, Maria Melentyeva, Uliana Gromova, Lyuba Shevtsova and others. But many are still unknown or little known due to years of verification of their identities. Great prestige among the partisans was won by girls - nurses, doctors, partisan scouts. But they were treated with a certain distrust and with great difficulty allowed to participate in military operations. At first, it was widely believed in the partisan detachments that girls could not be demolition workers. However, dozens of girls have mastered this difficult task. Among them is Anna Kalashnikova, head of a subversive group of a partisan detachment in the Smolensk region. Sofia Levanovich commanded a subversive group of a partisan detachment in the Oryol region and derailed 17 enemy echelons. Ukrainian partisan Dusya Baskina had 9 derailed enemy trains. Who remembers, who knows these names? And during the war years, their names were known not only in partisan detachments, they were known and feared by the invaders.

Where partisan detachments were operating that destroyed the Nazis, the order of General von Reichenau was in effect, which demanded to destroy the partisans “...use all means. All captured partisans of both sexes in military uniform or in civilian clothes shall be publicly hanged.” It is known that the Nazis were especially afraid of women and girls - residents of villages and villages in the area where the partisans operated. In their letters home, which fell into the hands of the Red Army, the invaders frankly wrote that "women and girls act like the most seasoned warriors ... In this respect, we would have to learn a lot." In another letter, Chief Corporal Anton Prost asked in 1942: “How long will we have to wage this kind of war? After all, we - the combat unit (Western Front p / n 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 Algemeine Zeitung of May 22, 1943 stated: “Even harmless-looking 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 medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War" II and III degrees. 27 partisans and underground fighters received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. 22 of them were awarded posthumously. We cannot say with certainty that these are exact figures. The number of those awarded is much higher, since the process of awarding, more precisely, the consideration of repeated submissions for awards, continued into the 90s. As an example, the fate of Vera Voloshina can be.

Vera Voloshina

The girl was in the same reconnaissance group as Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Both of them on the same day went on a mission to the intelligence department of the Western Front. Voloshina was wounded and lagged behind her group. Got captured. She was executed, like Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, on November 29. The fate of Voloshina remained unknown for a long time. Thanks to the search work of journalists, the circumstances of her capture and death were established. By decree of the President of the Russian Federation in 1993, V. Voloshina (posthumously) was awarded the title of Hero of Russia.

Vera Voloshina

The press is more often interested in numbers: how many feats have been accomplished. At the same time, 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 name the world-famous Komsomol-youth underground organization "Young Guard", which operated in the city of Krasnodon in the Donbass. Until now, there have been disputes about its size and 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 the conditions of occupation without betraying their actions. Unfortunately, a number of underground organizations are waiting for their researchers, because either little or almost nothing has been written about them. But the fates of underground women are hidden in them.

In the autumn of 1943, Nadezhda Troyan and her comrades-in-arms managed to carry out the verdict handed down 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) closed the embrasure of the German bunker, becoming the only woman (according to others 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 list of military operations, the number of partisans participating in it, but, as they say, the majority of those who specifically took part in the implementation of partisan raids remain “behind the scenes of events”. It is not possible to name everyone now. They, the privates, the living and the dead, are rarely remembered, despite the fact that they live somewhere near us.

Behind the hustle and bustle of everyday life in the last few decades, our historical memory of the everyday life of the past war has somewhat faded. On the privates of the Victory write and remember infrequently. As a rule, only those who accomplished a feat already captured in the history of the Great Patriotic War are remembered, less and less, and even then in a faceless form, about those who were next to them in the same ranks, in the same battle.

Rimma Ivanovna Shershneva is a Soviet partisan who closed the embrasure of an enemy bunker with her body. (According to some reports, the same feat was repeated by the lieutenant of the medical service Nina Aleksandrovna Bobyleva, a doctor of a partisan detachment operating in the Narva region).

Back in 1945, during the beginning of the demobilization of the girl soldiers, there were words that little was written about them, the girl soldiers, during the war years, and now, in peacetime, they can even be forgotten. On July 26, 1945, in the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, a meeting was held between the girls-soldiers who had finished their service in the Red Army, and 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 “M.I. Kalinin’s conversation with warrior girls.” I will not retell its content. I 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, the nobility of our women."

Speaking on behalf of and on behalf of the girl warriors, N. Meklin (Kravtsova) said what many people were talking about and thinking about, she said what they are talking about now. In her speech, there was, as it were, an outline of a plan that had not yet been told about girls, women - warriors. It must be admitted that what was said 70 years ago is still relevant today.

Finishing 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, Lisa Chaikina, about Krasnodontsy. Nothing is 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, by the way, the Central Committee of the Komsomol has long been thinking of doing this, in which to reflect women's combat training, as, for example, during the defense of Leningrad, to reflect the best women working in hospitals, to show snipers, female traffic controllers, etc. . In my opinion, literature and art are indebted to warrior girls in this respect. That's basically all I wanted to say."

Natalya Fedorovna Meklin (Kravtsova)

These proposals were implemented partially or not in full. Time has put other problems on the agenda, and much of what the girl warriors proposed in July 1945 is waiting for their authors now.

The war separated some people in different directions, brought others closer together. There were separations and meetings during the war. There was love in the war, there were betrayals, everything was there. But after all, the war united men and women of different ages in its fields, mostly young and healthy people who wanted to live and love, despite the fact that death was at every step. And no one in the war condemned anyone for this. But when the war ended and demobilized female warriors began to return to their homeland, on whose chests there were orders, medals and stripes about wounds, the civilian population often threw insults into their eyes, calling them "PPZh" (field wife), or poisonous questions: “What did you get awards for? How many husbands did she have? etc.

In 1945, this became widespread and even among the demobilized men aroused widespread protest and complete impotence how to deal with it. The Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League began to receive letters with a request to "put things in order in this matter." The Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League drew up a plan on the question raised - what to do? It noted that "... we do not always and everywhere sufficiently promote the exploits of girls among the people, we do not tell the population) and young people about the huge contribution made by girls and women to our victory over fascism."

It should be noted that at that time plans were made, lectures were edited, but the severity of the issue practically did not decrease for many years. Warrior girls were embarrassed to put on their orders and medals, they took them off their tunics and hid them in boxes. And when their born children grew up, the kids sorted out expensive awards and played with them, often not knowing why their mothers received them. If during the years of the Great Patriotic War, women warriors were talked about in the reports of the Sovinformburo, they wrote in newspapers, they published posters where there was a woman warrior, then the further the country moved away from the events of 1941-1945, the less often this topic sounded. A certain interest in it appeared only on the eve of March 8. Researchers have tried to find an explanation for this, but their interpretation cannot be accepted 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 in the Central Committee of the Komsomol with female soldiers demobilized from the Red Army and the Navy . The speech was called "Glorious daughters of the Soviet people." In it, M.I. Kalinin raised the question of the adaptation of demobilized girls to civilian life, the search for their professions, etc. And at the same time he advised: “Do not be conceited in your future practical work. You don’t talk about your merits, but let them talk about you - that’s better.” With reference to the work of the German researcher B. Fizeler "Woman at War: Unwritten History", these words of M.I. Kalinin cited above were interpreted by the Russian researcher O.Yu. Nikonova as a recommendation "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, 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 not fully explored subjects remain. If women warriors are written about more often; especially about the Heroes of the Soviet Union, about the women of the labor front, about the women of the home front, there are less and less generalizing works. Obviously, it is forgotten that one could "participate directly in the war, and one could participate by working in industry, in the possible military and logistics institutions." In the USSR, assessing the contribution made by Soviet women in defense of the Motherland, they were guided by the words of the General Secretary of 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 aircraft, the image of a nurse or a doctor with epaulettes on her shoulders will live in our memory as a shining example of selflessness and patriotism.” That's right, figuratively said, but ... where are the women of the rear? What is their role? 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: “... all the previous pales before the great epic of the current war, before heroism and sacrifice of Soviet women, showing civic prowess, endurance in the loss of loved ones and enthusiasm in the fight against such strength and, I would say, majesty, which has never been seen in the past.

On the civil prowess of women in the home front in 1941-1945. can be said in the words of M. Isakovsky, dedicated to the "Russian Woman" (1945):

... But can you tell about this -
What years did you live in!
What an immeasurable heaviness
On women's shoulders lay down! ..

But without facts, this generation is hard to understand. Recall that under the slogan "Everything for the front, everything for victory!" all the collectives of the Soviet rear worked. Sovinformburo in the most difficult time of 1941-1942. in their reports, along with reports on the exploits of Soviet soldiers, they also reported on 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 national economy of Russia by the autumn of 1942 fell from 22.2 million to 9.5 million.

The men who had gone to the front were replaced by women and teenagers.

Among them were 550,000 housewives, pensioners, and teenagers. In the food and light industry, the proportion of women during the war years was 80-95%. In transport, more than 40% (by the summer of 1943) were women. In the All-Russian Book of Memory of 1941-1945, in a review volume, interesting figures are given that do not need comments about the increase in the share of female labor throughout the country, especially in the first two years of the war. Thus, among steam engine drivers - from 6% to at the beginning of 1941 to 33% at the end of 1942, compressor operators - from 27% to 44%, respectively, metal turners - from 16% to 33%, welders - from 17% to 31%, locksmiths - from 3.9 % to 12%.At the end of the war, women in the Russian Federation accounted for 59% of workers and employees of the republic instead of 41% on the eve of the war.

Up to 70% of women came to individual enterprises where only men worked before the war. There were no enterprises, workshops, sites in industry where women would not work, there were no such professions that women would not have mastered; the proportion of women in 1945 was 57.2% compared with 38.4% in 1940, and in agriculture - 58.0% in 1945 against 26.1% in 1940. Among communication workers, he reached 69.1% in 1945. The proportion of women among workers and apprentices of industry in 1945 reached 70% in the professions of drillers and revolvers (in 1941 it was 48%), and among turners - 34%, against 16.2 % in 1941. In 145 thousand Komsomol youth brigades of the country, 48% of women from the total number of young people were employed. Only in the course of the competition for increasing labor productivity, for the manufacture of super-planned weapons for the front, over 25 thousand women were awarded orders and medals of the USSR.

To tell about themselves, their girlfriends, with whom they shared their joys and troubles, women warriors and women of the home front began years after the end of the war. On the pages of these collections of memoirs, which were published locally and in the capital's publishing houses, it was primarily about heroic military and labor deeds and very rarely about the daily difficulties of the war years. And only decades later they began to call a spade a spade and not hesitate to recall what difficulties Soviet women had to face, 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 of the Great Victory, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Slovak Republic, International Women's Day on March 8 became a public holiday "in commemoration of the outstanding merits of Soviet women ... in defending the Motherland during the Great Patriotic War , their heroism and selflessness 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, one task was set: to help human memory, so that in the memory of the people "the image of a Soviet woman - a patriot, a fighter, a toiler, a soldier's mother" will forever be preserved.

NOTES

See: Law on General Conscription, [September 1, 1939]. M., 1939. Art. 13.

Truth. 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 the meeting in the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League with demobilized warrior girls.

The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945: an encyclopedia. M., 1985. S. 269.

RGASPI. F. M-1. He. 53. D. 17. L. 49.

The Great Patriotic War. 1941-1945: Encyclopedia. S. 269.

See: Women of the Great Patriotic War.

The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945: an encyclopedia. S. 440.

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: an encyclopedia. S. 530.

There. P.270.

URL: 0ld. Bryanskovi.ru/projects/partisan/events.php?category-35

RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53. D. 13. L. 73–74.

There. D. 17. L. 18.

There.

There. F. M-7. Op. 3. D. 53. L. 148; The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945: an encyclopedia. C. 270; URL: http://www.great-country.ra/rabrika_articles/sov_eUte/0007.html

For more details, see: "Young Guard" (Krasnodon) - an artistic image and historical reality: Sat. 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.

There. L. 11.

There.

There. Op. 32. D. 331. L. 77–78. Highlighted by the author of the article.

There. Op. 5. D. 245. L. 30.

See: Fieseler B. Women at War: An Unwritten History. Berlin, 2002, p. 13; URL: http://7r.net/foram/thread150.html

Kalinin M.I. Selected works. M., 1975. S. 315.

There. S. 401.

There.

All-Russian book of memory, 1941-1945. M., 2005. Review volume. S. 143.

Great Patriotic War 1941-1945: Encyclopedia. S. 270.

All-Russian book of memory, 1941-1945. Review volume. S. 143.

RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 3. D. 331 a. L. 63.

There. Op. 6. D. 355. L. 73.

Quoted from: Great Soviet Encyclopedia. 3rd ed. M., 1974. T. 15. S. 617.

CPSU in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee. Ed. 8th, add. M., 1978. T 11. S. 509.

“Daughter, I have collected a bundle for you. Go away... Go away... You have two more 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 in the newspapers ...
On Victory Day, blogger radulova published the memoirs of women veterans from the book by Svetlana Aleksievich.

“We drove for many days ... We went out with the girls to some station with a bucket to get water. They looked around and gasped: one by one the trains went, and there were only girls. They sing. They wave to us - some with headscarves, some caps. It became clear: there are not enough men, they died in the ground. Or in captivity. Now we are instead of them ... Mom wrote me a prayer. I put it in a locket. Maybe it helped - I returned home. I kissed the medallion before the fight…”

“Once at night, a whole company conducted reconnaissance in combat in the sector of our regiment. By dawn, she moved away, and a groan was heard from the neutral zone. Left wounded. “Don’t go, they’ll kill you,” the fighters didn’t let me in, “you see, it’s already dawn.” Didn't listen, crawled. She found the wounded man, dragged him for eight hours, tying his hand with a belt. Dragged alive. The commander found out, hastily announced five days of arrest for unauthorized absence. And the deputy commander of the regiment reacted differently: "Deserves an award." At the age of nineteen I had a medal "For Courage". She turned gray at nineteen. At the age of nineteen, in the last battle, both lungs were shot, the second bullet went between two vertebrae. My legs were paralyzed... And I was considered murdered... At the age of nineteen... My granddaughter is like that now. I look at her and I don't believe it. Baby!”

“I had night duty… I went into the ward for the seriously wounded. The captain is lying… The doctors warned me before the shift that he would die at night… He would not make it until the morning… I asked him: “Well, how? How can I help you?" I will never forget… He suddenly smiled, such a bright smile on his exhausted face: “Unbutton your robe… Show me your chest… I haven’t seen my wife for a long time…” I felt ashamed, I answered him something there. She left and came back an hour later. He lies dead. And that smile on his face…”

…………………………………………………………………….

“And when he appeared for the third time, this is one instant - he will appear, then he will disappear, - I decided to shoot. I made up my mind, and suddenly such a thought flashed through: this is a man, even though he is an enemy, but a man, and my hands somehow began to tremble, a shiver went through my whole body, chills. Some kind of fear… Sometimes in a dream this feeling comes back to me… After the plywood targets, it was difficult to shoot at a living person. I can see him through the optical sight, I see him well. It’s as if he’s close… And inside of me something resists… Something won’t let me, I can’t make up my mind. But I pulled myself together, pulled the trigger ... We did not succeed right away. It's not a woman's job to hate and kill. Not ours... We had to convince ourselves. Persuade…"

“And the girls rushed to the front voluntarily, but a coward will not go to war on his own. They were brave, extraordinary girls. There are statistics: the losses among the doctors of the front line took second place after the losses in the rifle battalions. In the infantry. What is, for example, to pull the wounded from 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 beating, the fire does not stop. Quite unexpectedly for everyone, first one girl jumps out of the trench, then a second, a third ... They began to bandage and drag the wounded away, even the Germans were dumbfounded for a while. By ten o'clock in the evening, all the girls were seriously injured, and each saved a maximum of two or three people. They were rewarded sparingly, at the beginning of the war they were not scattered with awards. It was necessary to pull out the wounded man along with his personal weapon. The first question in the medical battalion: where are the weapons? At the beginning of the war it was not enough. A rifle, a machine gun, a machine gun - this also had to be dragged. In the forty-first, order number two hundred and eighty-one was issued on the presentation for an award for saving the lives of soldiers: for fifteen seriously wounded, 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 the salvation of forty - the Order of the Red Banner, for the salvation of eighty - the Order of Lenin. And I described to you what it meant to save at least one in battle ... From under the bullets ... "

“What was going on in our souls, such people as we were then, probably, will never be 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, each with a tear in our eyes. You won’t believe it now, from this shock my whole body tensed up, my illness, and I fell ill with “night blindness”, it happened to me from malnutrition, from nervous overwork, and so, my night blindness has passed. You see, the next day I was healthy, I recovered, through such a shock to my whole soul ... ”

…………………………………………

“I was thrown by a hurricane against a brick wall. She lost consciousness… When she came to, it was already evening. She raised her head, tried to squeeze her fingers - they seemed to be moving, barely pierced her left eye and went to the department, covered in blood. In the corridor I meet our older sister, she did not recognize me, she asked: “Who are you? Where?" She came closer, gasped and said: “Where have you been carried for so long, Ksenya? The wounded are hungry, but you are not.” They quickly bandaged my head, left arm above the elbow, and I went to get dinner. His eyes were dark, sweat was pouring down. She began to distribute dinner, fell. Brought to consciousness, and only heard: “Hurry! Hurry!” And again - "Hurry! Hurry!” A few days later, they took blood from me for the seriously wounded.”

“We are very young and went to the front. Girls. I even grew up for the war. Mom measured at home ... I grew ten centimeters ... ”

……………………………………

“We organized a nursing course, 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 got to the front ... "

……………………………………

“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 father had already fought by this time ... ”

………………………………………..

“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 draft board early in the morning. He went to get my certificate and went early in the morning on purpose so that everyone in the village could see that his daughter was at the front ... ”

……………………………………….

“I remember they let me go on leave. Before I went to my aunt, I went to the store. Before the war, she was terribly fond of sweets. I say:
- Give me candy.
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 have a bigger rifle than me. When we were given them, I looked and thought: “When will I grow up to this rifle?” And all of a sudden they began to ask, the whole queue:
- Give her candy. Cut out our coupons.
And they gave it to me."

“And for the first time in my life it happened ... Our ... Female ... I saw blood in myself, as I scream:
- I got hurt...
In intelligence with us was a paramedic, already an elderly man. He to me:
- Where did you hurt?
- I don’t know where ... But the blood ...
He, like a father, told me everything ... I went to intelligence after the war for fifteen years. Every night. And the dreams are like this: sometimes my machine gun failed, then we were surrounded. You wake up - your teeth creak. Do you remember where are you? There or here?”

…………………………………………..

“I left for the front as a materialist. Atheist. She left as a good Soviet schoolgirl, who was well taught. And there ... There I began to pray ... I always prayed before the fight, read my prayers. The words are simple... My words... There is only one meaning, so that I return to my mom and dad. I didn’t know real prayers, and I didn’t read the Bible. Nobody saw me pray. I am secret. I prayed furtively. Carefully. Because… We were different then, other people lived then. You understand?"

“Form on us could not be attacked: always in the blood. My first wounded man was Senior Lieutenant Belov, my last wounded man was Sergei Petrovich Trofimov, a mortar platoon sergeant. In the seventieth year, he came to visit me, and I showed my daughters his wounded head, on which there is still a large scar. In total, I carried four hundred and eighty-one wounded out of the fire. One of the journalists calculated: a whole rifle battalion ... They dragged men on themselves, two or three times heavier than us. And the wounded are even worse. You are dragging him and his weapons, and he is also wearing an overcoat and boots. You take eighty kilograms on yourself and drag. You lose... You go for the next one, and again seventy-eighty kilograms... And so five or six times in one attack. And in you yourself forty-eight kilograms - ballet weight. I can't believe it now...”

……………………………………

“I then became a squad leader. All department from young boys. We are on the boat all day. The boat is small, there are no latrines. If necessary, the guys can go overboard, and that's it. Well, how about me? A couple of times I got to the point that I jumped right overboard and swim. They yell, "Sergeant major overboard!" They'll pull it out. Here is such an elementary trifle ... But what is this trifle? I then treated...

………………………………………

“I returned from the war gray-haired. Twenty-one years old, and I'm all white. I had a severe wound, a contusion, I could not hear well in one ear. Mom met 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 the war is to wear men’s underpants. That was scary. And this is somehow for me ... I won’t express myself ... Well, firstly, it’s very ugly ... You are in the war, you are going to die for the Motherland, and you are wearing men’s shorts. In general, you look funny. Ridiculous. Men's shorts were then worn long. Wide. Sewn from satin. Ten girls in our dugout, and they are all in men's shorts. Oh my goodness! Winter and summer. Four years… They crossed the Soviet border… They finished off, as our commissar used to say at political classes, the beast in its own lair. Near the first Polish village, we were changed, given new uniforms and... And! AND! AND! They brought women's underpants and bras for the first time. For the first time in the whole war. Ha-ah... Well, of course... We saw normal lingerie... Why aren't you laughing? Crying… Well, why?”

……………………………………..

“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 nineteen, the Order of the Patriotic War of the second degree. When new recruits arrived, the guys were all young, of course, they were surprised. They are also eighteen or nineteen years old, and they mockingly asked: “What did you get your medals for?” or “Have you been in combat?” They pester with jokes: “Do the bullets pierce the armor of the tank?” I later bandaged one of these on the battlefield, under fire, and I remembered his last name - Dapper. He had a broken leg. I put a tire on him, and he asks for forgiveness from me: “Sister, I’m sorry that I offended you then ...”

“Disguised. We are sitting. We are waiting for the night to still make an attempt to break through. And Lieutenant Misha T., the battalion commander was wounded, and he served as a battalion commander, he was twenty years old, began to remember how he loved to dance and play the guitar. Then he asks:
- Have you ever tried?
- What? What have you tried? - And I wanted to eat terribly.
- Not what, but whom ... Babu!
And before the war, cakes were like that. With such a name.
- No-o-o...
And I haven't tried either. If you die and don't know what love is... They'll kill us at night...
- Go ahead, you fool! “I figured out what he was talking about.
They died for life, not yet knowing what life is. Everything else has only been read in books. I love movies about love…”

…………………………………………

“She shielded a loved one from a fragment of a mine. Fragments fly - these are some fractions of a second ... How did she manage? She saved Lieutenant Petya Boychevsky, she loved him. And he stayed alive. 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 returned to my mother alone...”

……………………………………………

“A separate smoke masking detachment was organized, commanded by the former commander of the torpedo boat division, Captain-Lieutenant Alexander Bogdanov. Girls, mostly with a secondary technical education or after the first courses of the institute. Our task is to protect the ships, cover them with smoke. The shelling will begin, the sailors are waiting: “I wish the girls hung the smoke. It's easier with him." They drove out in cars with a special mixture, and at that time everyone hid in a bomb shelter. We, as they say, called fire upon ourselves. The Germans were hitting this smokescreen…”

“I am bandaging a tanker… The battle is on, the roar is on. He asks: “Girl, what is your name?” Even a compliment. It was so strange for me to pronounce my name in this roar, in this horror - Olya.

………………………………………

“And now I am the commander of the gun. And, therefore, me - in one thousand three hundred and fifty-seventh anti-aircraft regiment. At first, blood was flowing from the nose and ears, indigestion set in completely ... The throat dried up to vomiting ... At night it’s not so scary, but during the day it’s very scary. It seems that the plane is flying right at you, exactly at your gun. Ramming at you! This is one moment ... Now it will turn all, all of you into nothing. Everything is the end!”

…………………………………….

“And while they found me, I got severe frostbite on my legs. Apparently, I was covered with snow, but I was breathing, and a hole formed in the snow ... Such a tube ... Sanitary dogs found me. They dug up the snow and brought my hat with earflaps. There I had a death passport, everyone had such passports: what relatives, where to report. They dug me up, put me on a raincoat, there was a full coat of blood ... But no one paid attention to my legs ... I was in the hospital for six months. They wanted to amputate a leg, amputate above the knee, because gangrene was starting. And here I was a little faint-hearted, I did not want to remain a cripple. Why should I live? Who needs me? Neither father nor mother. A burden in life. Well, who needs me, stump! I will suffocate…”

………………………………………

“They got a tank there. We were both senior drivers, and there should only be one driver in a tank. The command decided to appoint me as the commander of the IS-122 tank, and my husband as a senior driver. And so we came to Germany. Both are wounded. We have awards. There were a lot of tank girls in medium tanks, but in heavy tanks, I was the only one.”

“We were told to put on all the military, and I'm a meter fifty. I got into trousers, and the girls upstairs tied me up with them.

…………………………………..

“While he hears ... Until the last moment you tell him that no, no, how can you die. Kiss him, hug him: what are you, what are you? He is already dead, his eyes are on the ceiling, and I whisper something else to him ... I reassure him ... The names are now erased, gone from memory, but the faces remain ... "

…………………………………

“We had a nurse captured… A day later, when we recaptured that village, dead horses, motorcycles, and armored personnel carriers lay everywhere. They found her: her eyes were gouged out, her chest was cut off… They put her on a stake… It was cold, 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. Children's toy…”

……………………………….

“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... All covered in blood... He urgently needs to cut off his hand in order to bandage it. No other way. I don't have a knife or scissors. The bag telepals-telepalsya on its side, and they fell out. What to do? And I gnawed this pulp with my teeth. I gnawed it, bandaged it ... I bandage it, and the wounded man: “Hurry, sister. I will fight again.” In a fever…”

“I was afraid throughout the war that my legs would not be crippled. I had beautiful legs. Man - what? He is not so afraid even if he loses his legs. Still, a hero. Groom! And a woman will be crippled, so her fate will be decided. Women's fate ... "

…………………………………

“The men will make a fire at the bus stop, shake the lice, 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, it's boring. There are head lice, body lice, pubic lice ... I had them all ... ”

………………………………….

“Near Makiivka, in the Donbass, I was wounded, wounded in the thigh. Such a fragment, like a pebble, climbed in, sitting. I feel - blood, I put an individual package there too. And then I run, bandaging. I'm ashamed to tell anyone, the girl was wounded, but where - in the buttock. In the ass ... At sixteen, it's embarrassing to tell anyone. It's embarrassing to admit. Well, and so I ran, bandaged, until I lost consciousness from loss of blood. Full boots leaked…”

………………………………….

“The doctor came, they did a cardiogram, and they ask me:
- When did you have a heart attack?
- What heart attack?
- Your heart is in scars.
And these scars, apparently, from the war. You go over 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 mostly flew at night. For some time they tried to send us on assignments during the day, but they immediately abandoned this idea. Our “Po-2s” were shot from a machine gun… They made up to twelve sorties a night. I saw the famous ace pilot Pokryshkin when he flew in 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 had time to take off his shirt and unscrew it. She was dripping, as if he'd been out 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 could no longer carry the tablet, they pulled it along the ground.

………………………………

“We aspired ... We did not want to be said about us: “Oh, these 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…”

“Three times wounded and three times shell-shocked. In the war, who dreamed of what: who would return home, who would reach Berlin, and I thought of one thing - to live to see my birthday, so that I would be eighteen years old. For some reason, I was afraid to die earlier, not even live to be eighteen. I went in trousers, in a cap, always torn, because you always crawl on your knees, and even under the weight of the wounded. I could not believe that someday it would be possible to get up and walk on the ground, and not crawl. It was a dream! Once a division commander arrived, saw me and asked: “What kind of teenager is this? What are you holding him? He should be sent to study.”

…………………………………

“We were happy when we got a pot of water to wash our hair. If they walked for a long time, they looked for soft grass. They tore her and her legs ... Well, you see, they washed 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 linen from the knapsack, and if young, be sure to throw out the excess. And how superfluous 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. It's only four sleeves…”

“Let's go ... A man of two hundred girls, and behind a man of two hundred men. The heat is worth it. Hot Summer. March throw - thirty kilometers. Wild heat... And after us, red spots on the sand... Red footprints... Well, these things... Ours... How can you hide something here? The soldiers follow and pretend that they do not notice anything ... They do not look under their feet ... Our trousers withered, as if they were made of glass. They cut it. There were wounds, and the smell of blood could be heard all the time. They didn’t give us anything ... We guarded: when the soldiers would hang their shirts on the bushes. We’ll steal a couple of pieces ... Later they already guessed, laughed: “Sergeant, give us another linen. The girls took ours.” There was not enough cotton wool and bandages for the wounded... But not that... Women's underwear, perhaps, only appeared two years later. We walked in men's shorts and T-shirts ... Well, let's go ... In boots! The legs are fried too. 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, the men - who where to hide. They call us ... But we don’t hear the bombing, we don’t care about the bombing, we’re more likely to go to the river. To the water... Water! Water! And they sat there until they got wet... Under the fragments... Here it is... Shame was worse than death. And a few girls died in the water…”

“Finally got an appointment. They brought me to my platoon... The soldiers look: some with mockery, some even with evil, and the other shrug his shoulders like that - everything is immediately clear. When the battalion commander introduced that, they say, you have a new platoon commander, everyone immediately howled: “Uuuuuuuuuuuuu…” One even spat: “Ugh!” And a year later, when I was awarded the Order of the Red Star, these same guys, who survived, carried me in their arms to my dugout. They were proud of me."

……………………………………..

“We went on a mission with an accelerated march. The weather was warm, we walked light. When the positions of long-distance artillerymen began to pass, suddenly one jumped out of the trench and shouted: “Air! Frame!" I raised my head and searched the sky for a “frame”. I don't see any aircraft. All around is quiet, no sound. Where is that "frame"? Then one of my sappers asked permission to get out of the line. I see, he goes to that gunner and gives him a slap in the face. Before I could think of anything, the artilleryman shouted: “Boys, they are beating us!” Other gunners jumped out of the trench and surrounded our sapper. My platoon, without hesitation, threw probes, mine detectors, knapsacks and rushed to his rescue. A fight ensued. I couldn't understand what happened? Why did the platoon get into a fight? Every minute counts, and here is such a mess. I give the command: “Platoon, get in line!” Nobody pays attention to me. Then I pulled out my gun and fired into the air. Officers jumped out of the dugout. While everyone was calmed down, a considerable time passed. The captain came up to my platoon and asked: “Who is in charge 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 how it all happened. So I learned what “frame” is, what an offensive word it was for a woman. Something like a whore. Frontal curse…”

“Are you asking about love? I am not afraid to tell the truth ... I was a page, what stands for “field wife. Wife at war. Second. Illegal. The first battalion commander... I didn't like him. He was a good man, but I didn't like him. And I went to him in a dugout a few months later. Where to go? There are only men around, so it's better to live with one than to be afraid of everyone. In battle, it was not as scary as after the battle, especially when we had a rest, we would retreat to re-form. How they shoot, fire, they call: “Sister! Sister!”, and after the battle, everyone guards you… You won’t get out of the dugout at night… Did the other girls tell you this or didn’t they admit it? We were ashamed, I think ... They kept silent. Proud! But it was all there... But they are silent about it... It is not accepted... No... For example, there was one woman in the battalion, she 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 the fact that I waved my arms, then I would give one on the cheeks, on the hands, then the other. I was wounded, ended up in the hospital and waved my arms there. The nanny will wake you up at night: “What are you doing?” Who will you tell?”

…………………………………

“We buried him… He was lying on a raincoat, he had just been killed. The Germans are firing at us. It is necessary to bury quickly... Right now... We found old birch trees, chose the one that stood at a distance from the old oak. The biggest. Near it ... I tried to remember so that I could return and find this place later. Here the village ends, here is a fork ... But how to remember? How to remember if one birch is already burning before our eyes ... How? They began to say goodbye ... They say to me: “You are the first!” My heart jumped, I realized ... What ... Everyone, it turns out, knows about my love. Everyone knows… The thought hit: maybe he knew? 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 glad at this thought, which, perhaps, he also knew. What if he liked me too? As if he is alive and will answer me something now ... I remembered how on New Year's Eve 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 ... Lies on a raincoat ... This moment ... And I rejoice ... I stand and smile to myself. Abnormal. I am glad that he, perhaps, knew about my love ... She came up and kissed him. Never kissed a man before… It was the first…”

“How did the Motherland meet us? I can’t live without sobs… 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 knots ... ”They insulted me in every way ... The Russian dictionary is rich ... A guy escorts me from the dance, I suddenly feel bad, bad, my heart rumbles. I go and go and sit in a snowdrift. "What happened to you?" - "Never mind. Danced." And these are my two wounds... This is war... And you have to learn to be gentle. To be weak and fragile, and her legs in boots were spread - the fortieth size. It's unusual for someone to hug me. I got used to taking responsibility for myself. She waited for tender words, but did not understand them. They are like children to me. At the front among men - a strong Russian mat. Got used to it. A friend taught me, she worked in the library: “Read poetry. Yesenin read.

“The legs were gone… The legs were cut off… They rescued me in the same place, in the forest… The operation was in the most primitive conditions. They put me on the table to operate, and there was not even iodine, they sawed my legs with a simple saw, both legs ... They put me on the table, and there was no iodine. For six kilometers they went to another partisan detachment for iodine, and I was lying on the table. Without anesthesia. Without ... Instead of anesthesia - a bottle of moonshine. There was nothing but an ordinary saw… A carpenter's saw… We had a surgeon, he himself was also without legs, he spoke about me, it was other doctors who said: “I bow to her. I have operated on so many men, but I have not seen such men. Don't scream." I held on… I used to be strong in public…”

……………………………………..

She ran to the car, opened the door and began to report:
- Comrade General, on your orders...
Heard:
- Set aside...
Stretched out at attention. The general did not even turn to me, but through the glass of the car he was looking at the road. Nervous and often looks at the clock. I am standing. He addresses his orderly:
- Where is the commander of the sappers?
I tried again to report:
- Comrade General...
He finally turned to me and with annoyance:
- The hell 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 glared at me.
- Who are you?
- Sapper platoon commander, Comrade General.
Are you a platoon leader? he was indignant.

- Are your sappers working?
- That's right, Comrade General!
- Got it: general, general ...
He got out of the car, walked a few steps forward, then came back to me. He stood and closed his eyes. And to his orderly:

……………………………………….

“My husband was the head machinist, and I was the machinist. We traveled in a wagon for four years, and our son was with us. He never even saw a cat in my entire war. When I caught a cat near Kyiv, our train was terribly bombed, five planes flew in, and he hugged her: “Dear kitty, how glad I am that I saw you. I don't see anyone, well, sit with me. Let me kiss you." A child ... A child should have everything 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 in the 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 is shouting: “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…”

…………………………………

“I stayed with him for one day, the second and I decide: “Go to the headquarters and report. I'll stay here with you." He went to the authorities, but I was not breathing: well, how would they say that at twenty-four hours her leg was gone? This is the front, that's understandable. And suddenly I see - the authorities are going to the dugout: a major, a colonel. Everyone greets by the hand. 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 a real wife, there are documents. This is such a woman! Let's see this woman! They said such words, they all cried. I remember that evening all my life ... What else do I have left? Registered as a nurse. I went with him to investigate. The mortar hits, I see it has fallen. 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 - alive ... Alive! ”

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“Two years ago, our chief of staff, Ivan Mikhailovich Grinko, visited me. He has been retired for a long time. Sitting at the same table. I also baked pies. They talk with her husband, remember ... They started talking about our girls ... And I, like a glow: “Honor, speak, respect. And the girls are almost all single. Single. They live in communal apartments. Who took pity on them? Protected? Where did you all go after the war? Traitors!!” In a word, I spoiled their festive mood ... The chief of staff was sitting in your place. “Show me,” he pounded his fist on the table, “who offended you. Just show 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 day my mother lifts me out of bed and says: “Daughter, I have collected a bundle for you. Go away... Go away... You have two more 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 am dragging two wounded. I'll drag one - I leave, then - the other. And so I pull them in turn, because they are very seriously wounded, they cannot be left, both of them, as it is easier to explain, their legs are beaten off high, they bleed. Here a minute is precious, every minute. And suddenly, when I crawled away from the battle, there was less smoke, suddenly I find that I am dragging one of our tankers and one German ... I was horrified: ours are dying there, and I am saving the German. I was in a panic… There, in the smoke, I didn’t understand… I see: a man is dying, a man is screaming… Ahhh… They are both burnt, black. The same. And then I saw: someone else's medallion, someone else's watch, everything is someone else's. This form is cursed. And now what? I pull our wounded man and think: “Should we return 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. You are my diamond... There cannot be one heart for hate, and the second for love. Man has only one."

“The war ended, they were terribly unprotected. Here is my wife. She is a smart woman, and she treats military girls badly. He believes that they were going to the war for suitors, that everyone was spinning novels there. Although in fact, we have a sincere conversation, it was most often 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, he was loved at the front by a beautiful, as I now understand, girl. Nurse. But he did not marry her, was demobilized and found himself another, prettier one. And he is unhappy with his wife. Now he remembers that, his military love, she would be his friend. And after the front, he did not want to marry her, because for four years he saw her only in worn out boots and a man's padded jacket. We tried to forget the war. And they also forgot their girls ... "

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“My friend… I won’t give her last name, she’ll suddenly be offended… A military assistant… She was wounded three times. The war ended, she entered the medical institute. She did not find any of her relatives, they all died. She was terribly poor, washing the porches at night to feed herself. But she did not admit to anyone that she was a war invalid and had benefits, she tore all the documents. I ask: "Why did you break?" She cries: “And who would marry me?” “Well, well,” I say, “I did the right thing.” He cries even louder: “I could use these papers 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 rode a heroine, I never thought that you could meet a front-line girl like that. We have gone through so much, saved so many children for mothers, husbands' wives. And suddenly ... I recognized the insult, I heard offensive words. Before that, except for: “dear sister”, “dear sister”, I didn’t hear anything else ... They sat down to drink tea in the evening, the mother took her son to the kitchen and cries: “Who did you marry? At the front… You have two younger sisters. Who will marry them now? And now, when I think about it, I want to cry. Imagine: I brought a record, I loved it very much. There were such words: and you are rightfully supposed to walk in the most fashionable shoes ... This is about a front-line girl. I put it on, the older sister came up and smashed it in front of my eyes, saying that you have no rights. They destroyed all my front-line photographs ... Enough for us, front-line girls. And after the war we got it, after the war we had another war. Also terrible. 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 ... Invite us to meetings ... And at first we hid, we didn’t even wear awards. The men wore it, the women didn't. Men are winners, heroes, suitors, they had a war, but they looked at us with completely different eyes. Quite different... We, I tell you, they took away the victory... The victory was not shared with us. And it was a shame ... It is not clear ... "

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“The first medal “For Courage”… The battle began. Heavy fire. The soldiers lay down. Team: “Forward! For the Motherland! ”, And they lie. Again the team, again lie. I took off my hat so that they could see: the girl got up ... And they all got up, and we went into battle ... ”

During the four war years, the highest award of the country was awarded to nine dozen women who defended their homeland with weapons in their hands.

Women - heroes of the Second World War: who are they? To answer this question, you do not need to guess for a long time. There is no such kind and type of troops in which Soviet women would not fight. And on land, and at sea, and in the air - everywhere one could find warriors who took up arms to defend their homeland. Such names as Tatyana Markus, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Marina Raskova, Lyudmila Pavlichenko are probably known to everyone in our country and the former Soviet republics.

Sniper girls before being sent to the front

Official statistics say that 490 thousand women were drafted into the army and navy. Three aviation regiments were formed entirely from women - the 46th guards night bomber, 125th guards bomber and 586th air defense fighter regiments, as well as a separate women's company of sailors, a separate women's volunteer rifle brigade, a central women's sniper school and a separate women's reserve rifle regiment.

But in reality, the number of women who fought was, of course, much larger. After all, many of them defended their country in hospitals and evacuation centers, in partisan detachments and in the underground.

And the Motherland fully appreciated their merits. 90 women have earned the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for their exploits during the Second World War, and four more have become full holders of the Order of Glory. And there are hundreds of thousands of women - holders of other orders and medals.

Heroine pilots

Most of the women who earned the highest rank of the country on the fronts of the Second World War were among the pilots. This is easily explained: after all, there were already three purely female regiments in aviation, while in other branches and types of troops such units were almost never found. In addition, one of the most difficult tasks fell to the share of female pilots: night bombing on the "heavenly slug" - the U-2 plywood biplane.

Is it any wonder that out of 32 female pilots who received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, 23 are “night witches”: this is how the German warriors called the heroines, who suffered serious losses from their night raids. In addition, it was women pilots who were the first to receive the highest rank before the war. In 1938, the crew of the Rodina aircraft - Valentina Grizodubova, Polina Osipenko and Marina Raskova - received the highest award for a non-stop flight from Moscow to the Far East.

Pilots of the Women's Aviation Regiment

Of the more than three dozen women - holders of the highest rank, seven received it posthumously. And among them - the first pilot who rammed a German plane, the pilot of the Su-2 bomber Ekaterina Zelenko. By the way, she was awarded this title many years after the end of the war - in 1990. One of the four women who were full holders of the Order of Glory also served in aviation: the air gunner of the reconnaissance aviation regiment Nadezhda Zhurkina.

Underground heroines

Slightly less than women pilots, among the Heroes of the Soviet Union, there are 28 women underground fighters and partisans. But here, unfortunately, the number of heroines who received the title posthumously is much larger: 23 underground fighters and partisans accomplished feats at the cost of their lives. Among them are the first woman - Hero of the Soviet Union during the war years Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, and pioneer hero Zina Portnova, and members of the Young Guard Lyubov Shevtsova and Ulyana Gromova ...

Three Soviet female partisans, 1943

Alas, the "silent war", as the German occupiers called it, was almost always fought to the point of complete annihilation, and few managed to survive, actively operating underground.

Medical heroines

Of the almost 700,000 doctors in the active army, about 300,000 were women. And among the 2 million middle and junior medical staff, this ratio was even higher: almost 1.3 million! At the same time, many female medical instructors were constantly at the forefront, sharing all the hardships of the war with male soldiers.

A nurse bandaging a wounded man

Therefore, it is natural that in terms of the number of Heroes of the Soviet Union, female doctors are in third place: 15 people. And one of the full holders of the Order of Glory is also a physician. But the ratio among them of the living and those who were awarded the highest title posthumously is also indicative: 7 out of 15 heroines did not live to see their moment of glory.

As, for example, the sanitary instructor of the 355th separate battalion of the Marine Corps of the Pacific Fleet, sailor Maria Tsukanova. One of the “twenty-five thousand” girls who responded to the order to call up 25,000 female volunteers to the navy, she served in the coastal artillery, and became a medical instructor shortly before the landing attack on the coast occupied by the Japanese army. Medical instructor Maria Tsukanova managed to save the lives of 52 sailors, but she herself died - it happened on August 15, 1945 ...

Heroine Infantry

It would seem that even during the war years, women and infantry were difficult to combine. It's one thing - pilots or doctors, but infantrymen, workhorses of war, people who, in fact, always and everywhere start and end any battle and at the same time endure all the hardships of military life ...

Nevertheless, women also served in the infantry, who risked not only sharing the difficulties of infantry life with men, but also mastering hand weapons, which required considerable courage and skill from them.

Oath

Among the female infantrymen there are six Heroes of the Soviet Union, five of them received this title posthumously. However, for male infantrymen the ratio will be the same. One of the full holders of the Order of Glory also served in the infantry. Remarkably, among the infantry heroines is the first woman from Kazakhstan who deserved such a high rank: machine gunner Manshuk Mametova. During the liberation of Nevel, she alone held the dominant height with her machine gun and died without letting the Germans through.

Heroine Snipers

When they say "female sniper", the first name that comes to mind is Lieutenant Lyudmila Pavlichenko. And quite deservedly: after all, she received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, being the most productive female sniper in history! But in addition to Pavlichenko, five more of her fighting girlfriends were awarded the highest award for the art of marksmanship, and three of them posthumously.

One of the full holders of the Order of Glory is Sergeant Nina Petrova. Her story is unique not only because she had 122 destroyed enemies, but also because of the age of the sniper: she fought when she was already 52 years old! Few of the men sought the right to go to the front at that age, and the instructor of the sniper school, behind which was the Winter War of 1939-1940, achieved this. But, alas, she did not live to see the Victory: Nina Petrova died in a car accident a week before her, on May 1, 1945.

Tank heroines

You can imagine a woman at the controls of an airplane, but behind the controls of a tank, it's not easy. And, nevertheless, there were women tankers, and not just were, but achieved great success at the front, receiving high awards. Two female tankers received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, and one of them - Maria Oktyabrskaya - posthumously. And she died, under enemy fire, repairing her own tank.

Soviet tanker

Own in the truest sense of the word: the tank "Fighting Girlfriend", on which Maria fought as a driver, was built with money collected by her and her sister after the woman learned about the death of her husband, regimental commissar Ilya Oktyabrsky. To achieve the right to take a place behind the levers of her tank, Maria Oktyabrskaya had to apply personally to Stalin, who helped her get to the front. And the woman tanker fully justified the high trust.

Heroines-communicators

One of the most traditional book and film characters associated with the war are signal girls. Indeed, for delicate work requiring perseverance, attentiveness, accuracy and good hearing, they were willingly taken, sent to the troops as telephone operators, radio operators and other communications specialists.

Communication women

In Moscow, on the basis of one of the oldest divisions of the communications troops, during the war years, there was a special school in which female signalmen were trained. And it is quite natural that among the signalmen there were their own Heroes of the Soviet Union. Moreover, both girls, who deserved such a high rank, received it posthumously - like Elena Stempkovskaya, during the battle of her battalion surrounded, she caused artillery fire on herself and died during a breakthrough to her own.

Many Soviet women who served in the Red Army were ready to commit suicide so as not to be captured. Violence, bullying, painful executions - such a fate awaited most of the captured nurses, signalmen, intelligence officers. Only a few ended up in prisoner-of-war camps, but even there their situation was often even worse than that of Red Army men.

During the Great Patriotic War, more than 800 thousand women fought in the ranks of the Red Army. The Germans equated Soviet nurses, intelligence officers, snipers with partisans and did not consider them military personnel. Therefore, the German command did not extend to them even those few international rules for the treatment of prisoners of war that applied to Soviet male soldiers.

In the materials of the Nuremberg trials, an order was preserved that was in force throughout the war: to shoot all "commissars who can be recognized by the Soviet star on their sleeves and Russian women in uniform."

The execution most often completed a series of bullying: women were beaten, brutally raped, and curses were carved on their bodies. The bodies were often stripped and thrown away without even thinking about burial. In the book of Aron Schneer, the testimony of a German soldier Hans Rudhoff, who in 1942 saw dead Soviet nurses, is given: “They were shot and thrown onto the road. They lay naked."

Svetlana Aleksievich in the book "War has no woman's face" quotes the memoirs of one of the female soldiers. According to her, they always kept two cartridges for themselves in order to shoot themselves, and not be captured. The second cartridge is in case of a misfire. The same participant in the war recalled what happened to the captured nineteen-year-old nurse. When they found her, her chest was cut off and her eyes were gouged out: “They put her on a stake ... Frost, and she is white-white, and her hair is all gray.” In the backpack, the deceased girl had letters from home and a children's toy.

SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, known for his cruelty, equated women with commissars and Jews. All of them, according to his order, were supposed to be interrogated with passion and then shot.

Women soldiers in the camps

Those women who managed to escape execution were sent to camps. Almost constant violence awaited them there. Especially cruel were the policemen and those male prisoners of war who agreed to work for the Nazis and joined the camp guards. Women were often given to them "as a reward" for their service.

In the camps, there were often no basic living conditions. The prisoners of the Ravensbrück concentration camp tried to make their existence as easy as possible: they washed their hair with ersatz coffee that was given out for breakfast, they secretly made their own combs.

According to the norms of international law, prisoners of war could not be involved in work in military factories. But this was not applied to women. In 1943, the captured Elizaveta Klemm tried on behalf of a group of prisoners to protest the decision of the Germans to send Soviet women to the factory. In response to this, the authorities first beat everyone, and then herded them into a cramped room where it was impossible even to move.

In Ravensbrück, female prisoners of war sewed uniforms for the German troops and worked in the infirmary. In April 1943, the famous “protest march” took place there: the camp authorities wanted to punish the recalcitrants who invoked the Geneva Convention and demanded that they be treated as prisoners of war. The women were to march through the camp. And they marched. But not doomed, but chasing a step, as in a parade, in a slender column, with the song "Holy War". The effect of punishment turned out to be the opposite: they wanted to humiliate women, but instead they received evidence of intransigence and fortitude.

In 1942, Elena Zaitseva, a nurse, was taken prisoner near Kharkov. She was pregnant, but hid it from the Germans. She was selected to work at a military factory in Neusen. The working day lasted 12 hours, they spent the night in the workshop on wooden plank beds. The prisoners were fed turnips and potatoes. Zaitseva worked until childbirth, nuns from a nearby monastery helped to take them. The newborn was given to the nuns, and the mother returned to work. After the end of the war, mother and daughter managed to reunite. But there are few such stories with happy endings.

Only in 1944 was a special circular issued by the Chief of the Security Police and the SD on the treatment of female prisoners of war. They, like other Soviet prisoners, were to be subjected to a police check. If it turned out that a woman was “politically unreliable”, then the status of a prisoner of war was removed from her and she was handed over to the security police. The rest were sent to concentration camps. In fact, this was the first document in which women who served in the Soviet army were equated with male prisoners of war.

"Unreliable" after interrogations were sent to execution. In 1944, a female major was brought to the Stutthof concentration camp. Even in the crematorium, they continued to mock her until she spat in the German's face. After that, she was pushed alive into the furnace.

There were cases when women were released from the camp and transferred to the status of civilian workers. But it is difficult to say what was the percentage of those actually released. Aron Schneer notes that in the cards of many Jewish prisoners of war, the entry “released and sent to the labor exchange” actually meant something completely different. They were formally released, but in fact they were transferred from the Stalags to concentration camps, where they were executed.

After captivity

Some women managed to escape from captivity and even return to the unit. But being in captivity changed them irreversibly. Valentina Kostromitina, who served as a medical instructor, recalled her friend Musa, who had been in captivity. She was "terribly afraid to go into the landing, because she was in captivity." She never managed to "cross the bridge on the pier and board the boat." The stories of a friend made such an impression that Kostromitina was afraid of captivity even more than bombing.

A considerable number of Soviet women prisoners of war after the camps could not have children. Often they were experimented on, subjected to forced sterilization.

Those who survived to the end of the war were under pressure from their own: often women were reproached for surviving captivity. They were expected to commit suicide but not surrender. At the same time, even the fact that many did not have any weapons with them at the time of captivity was not taken into account.

During the Great Patriotic War, such a phenomenon as collaborationism was also widespread.
The question of whether and today is the subject of study for historians.

Not so long ago, the Russian media wrote animatedly that the Krasnodar Higher Military Aviation School began to accept applications from girls. Dozens of those wishing to sit at the helm of a combat aircraft immediately poured into the selection committee.

In peacetime, girls who master military specialties seem to us something exotic. But when the threat of war looms over the country, the fair sex often shows amazing courage and resilience, in no way inferior to men. So it was during the Great Patriotic War, when women fought at the front on an equal footing with men. They mastered a variety of military professions and carried out military service as nurses, pilots, sappers, scouts and even snipers.

In difficult military conditions, young girls, many of whom were yesterday's schoolgirls, performed feats and died for the Fatherland. At the same time, even in the trenches, they continued to preserve femininity, showing it in everyday life and reverent care for their comrades.

Few of our contemporaries are able to imagine what Soviet women had to go through during the war years. There are already few of them themselves - those who survived and managed to convey precious memories to their descendants.

One of the keepers of these memories is our colleague, the chief specialist of the scientific department of the RVIO, candidate of historical sciences Victoria Petrakova. She devoted her scientific work to the topic of women in the war, the topic of her research is Soviet female snipers.

She told History.RF about the hardships that befell these heroines (Victoria was lucky enough to communicate with some of them personally).

"The parachutes were laid out to carry the bombs"

Victoria, I understand that the topic of women at the front is very extensive, so let's take a closer look at the Great Patriotic War.

The mass participation of Soviet women in the Great Patriotic War is an unprecedented phenomenon in world history. Neither in Nazi Germany nor in the allied countries did such a number of women participate in the war, and, moreover, women did not master military specialties abroad. With us, they were pilots, snipers, tankers, sappers, miners ...

- Did Russian women start fighting only in 1941? Why were they recruited into the army?

This happened with the emergence of new military registration specialties, the development of technology, and the involvement of a large number of human resources in combat operations. Women were called in to free the men for more difficult warfare. Our women were on the battlefields during the Crimean War, the First World War, and the Civil War.

- Is it known how many women in the Soviet Union fought during the Great Patriotic War?

- Historians have not yet established the exact figure. In various works, the number is from 800 thousand to 1 million. During the war years, these women mastered more than 20 military professions.

- Were there many female pilots among them?

- As for the pilots, we had three women's aviation regiments. The decree on their creation was issued on October 8, 1941. This happened thanks to the famous pilot Marina Mikhailovna Raskova, who at that time was already a Hero of the Soviet Union and turned directly to Stalin with such a proposal. The girls actively went into aviation, because then there were many different flying clubs. Moreover, in September 1938, Polina Osipenko, Valentina Grizodubova and Marina Raskova made a direct flight from Moscow to the Far East lasting more than 26 hours. For this flight they were awarded the title of "Hero of the Soviet Union". They became the first women - Heroes of the Soviet Union before the war, and during the war, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya became the first. Thus, the history of women in aviation during the war years acquired a completely new sound. As I said, we had three aviation regiments: 586th, 587th and 588th. The 588th was subsequently (in February 1943) renamed the 46th Taman Guards Regiment. The Germans called the pilots of this regiment the "Night Witches".

- Which of the military pilots of that time could you highlight?

- Among the women who piloted fighters, one of the most famous is Lydia (Lilia) Litvyak, who was called the "White Lily of Stalingrad." She went down in history as the most productive female fighter: she had 16 victories on her account - 12 personal and 4 group. Lydia began her combat career in the sky over Saratov, then defended the sky of Stalingrad in the most difficult September days of 1942. She died on August 1, 1943 - she did not return from a combat mission. Moreover, it is interesting: she had a fighting friend who told me that Lydia said that the worst thing for her would be to go missing, because then her memory would be erased. Actually, that's what happened. And only in the early 1970s in the Donetsk region, search teams found a mass grave, in which they found the girl. After examining the remains and comparing the documents, it was established that this was Lydia Litvyak. In 1990 she was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

In the already mentioned 46th Women's Aviation Regiment, there were a lot of those who were awarded this title posthumously. Pilots, when they left for a combat mission at night, sometimes laid out parachutes. And the planes on which they flew were practically plywood. That is, if shells hit them, the planes instantly ignited, and the pilots could no longer eject.

- Why didn't they take parachutes with them?

- To carry more bombs. Despite the fact that the plane could easily catch fire, its advantage was that it was slow. This made it possible to quietly fly up to enemy positions, which increased the accuracy of bombing. But if the projectile did hit the plane, many were burned alive in bombers diving to the ground.

“Men cried when they saw girls die”

- Is it known what percentage of Soviet women could survive until the end of the war?

This is very difficult to ascertain if one takes into account the leadership's not well-ordered mobilization policy towards women during the war years. Statistics on losses among women do not exist at all! In the book of G. F. Krivosheev (Grigory Fedotovich Krivosheev - Soviet and Russian military historian, author of several works on the military losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR - Note. ed.), which is the best-known study to date, which contains the most accurate data on losses, it is said that women were included in the total number of losses - there was no distinction by gender. Therefore, the number of women who died during the Great Patriotic War is still unknown.

How did women cope with domestic difficulties in the war? After all, here they were required not only moral, but also physical endurance.

- Women's health at the front was practically atrophied, the body was constantly in a state of mobilization - both mentally and physiologically. It is clear that after the war people "thawed" and came to their senses, but in the war it simply could not be otherwise. A person needed to survive, it was necessary to carry out a combat mission. The conditions were very extreme. In addition, women fell into mixed units. Imagine: the infantry marches tens of kilometers - it was difficult to solve some everyday moments when there were only men around. In addition, not all women were subject to mobilization. Those who had small children, elderly dependent parents were not taken to the war. Because the military leadership understood that all the experiences associated with this could subsequently affect the psychological state at the front.

- What was required to pass this selection?

It was necessary to have a minimum education and be in very good physical condition. Only those who had excellent eyesight could become snipers. By the way, many Siberians were taken to the front - they were very strong girls. In particular, they were attentive to the psychological state of a person. We cannot but recall Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, who in the most difficult days of the Moscow battle became a scout-saboteur. Unfortunately, various negative statements are currently appearing that offend the memory of this girl and devalue her feat. For some reason, people do not try to realize that she entered the reconnaissance and sabotage unit, where, of course, they did not take those with mental disabilities. To serve there, it was necessary to pass a medical examination, obtain various certificates, and so on. This part was commanded by a major, a hero of the Spanish war, the legendary Arthur Sprogis. He obviously would have seen some deviations. Therefore, the mere fact that she was enrolled in this unit and she became a scout-saboteur indicates that the person was mentally stable.

- How did men treat women in the military? Were they perceived as equal comrades-in-arms?

It all turned out to be very interesting. For example, when female snipers came to the front, men treated them with irony and distrust: “They brought the girls!” And when the first control firing started and these girls knocked out all the targets, respect for them, of course, increased. Naturally, they were taken care of, snipers were even called "glasses". They were treated like a father. A very touching story was told to me by sniper Klavdia Efremovna Kalugina. She had three sniper pairs, and everyone was called Masha. All three died. Her first sniper pair, Masha Chigvintseva, died in the summer of 1944. Then there was the operation "Bagration" - they liberated Belarus. Masha moved, and, apparently, the optics glared in the sun. The German sniper fired and hit her just below the right eye, right through. Masha dropped dead. Claudia Efremovna said that at that moment she screamed at the entire line of defense. Soldiers ran out of the dugout to her crying, tried to calm her down: “Don’t cry, the Germans will hear, they will open mortar fire!” But nothing worked. This is understandable: after all, you share shelter, food, secrets with a sniper pair, this is your closest person. She was buried in the summer in a field where there were many wild flowers: the grave was decorated with daisies and bells. Everyone came to bury Masha, up to the unit commanders. But it was already 1944, and the men had seen a lot of death and blood. But still, everyone cried at Masha's funeral. When she was lowered into the ground, the commander said: "Sleep well, dear Marusya." And all the men wept when they saw the young girls dying.

“When they came back, all sorts of unpleasant things sounded”

- And in which troops was it most dangerous for women to serve?

- In 1943, a study was conducted on the Leningrad Front on injuries among women of various military professions. It was highest, naturally, in the military medical service - nurses pulled the wounded from the battlefield under bullets and shrapnel. Signalmen and miners were often injured. If we talk about snipers, then the injury rate of this military profession, for all its danger and complexity, was relatively low.

- Were there many women among the snipers? How were they trained?

- In the Soviet Union, the only women's sniper school operated not only in our country, but throughout the world. In November 1942, women's sniper courses were created at the Central School of Sniper Instructors (male). Then, in May 1943, the Central Women's Sniper Training School appeared; it existed until May 1945. This school has released about two thousand female cadets. Of these, 185 people were lost, that is, 10 percent of the total. Snipers, firstly, were protected, they were not allowed to attack: they were supposed to fight only on the defensive. Snipers mostly died during the execution of a combat mission. This could happen due to accidental negligence: during sniper duels (when the optical sight glared in the sun, the German sniper fired, and, accordingly, the sniper from the opposite side died) or under mortar fire.

- What happened to these heroines after the end of the war?

Their fates were different. In general, the topic of post-war rehabilitation of female soldiers is very complex. The memory of the women's feat during the war years was forgotten for a very long time. Even the grandmothers-veterans themselves told how embarrassed they were to say that they fought. This was shaped by negative attitudes in society, which relied on various stories about "field wives". For some reason, this cast a shadow on all the women who fought. When they returned, unfortunately, all sorts of unpleasant things could be said to them. But I talked with them and I know what front-line everyday life and combat work cost them. After all, many returned with health problems, could not then have children. Take the same snipers: they lay in the snow for two days, received maxillofacial wounds ... These women endured a lot.

- Really there were no war novels with a happy ending?

There were happy cases when love was born in the conditions of war, then people got married. There were sad stories when one of the lovers died. But all the same, as a rule, the stories of the same “field wives” are, first of all, crippled female destinies. And we have no moral right to judge, much less to condemn. Although already today someone, apparently not having respect for memory, pulls out only individual plots from the multifaceted history of the war, turning them into “fried” facts. And this is very sad. When a woman returned from the war, the process of getting used to civilian life took a long time. It was necessary to master peaceful professions. They worked in completely different areas: in museums, at factories, someone was an accountant, there were also those who went to teach theory at higher military schools. People returned psychologically broken, it was very difficult to build a personal life.

"Not everyone could fire the first shot"

Still, women are gentle and sensitive creatures, it is rather difficult to associate them with war, murders ... Those girls who went to the front, what were they like?

One of my articles tells the story of Lidia Yakovlevna Anderman. She was a sniper, holder of the Order of Glory; unfortunately, she is no longer alive. She said that after the war she dreamed for a very long time of the first killed German. At the school, future snipers were taught to shoot exclusively at targets, and at the front they had to deal with living people. Due to the fact that the distance could be small and the optical sight brought the target closer by 3.5 times, it was often possible to make out the enemy's uniform, the outlines of his face. Lidia Yakovlevna later recalled: “I saw through the scope that he had a red beard, some kind of red hair.” She dreamed of him for a long time even after the war. But not everyone could immediately make a shot: natural pity and qualities inherent in female nature made themselves felt when performing a combat mission. Of course, the women understood that the enemy was in front of them, but still it was a living person.

- How did they overpower themselves?

The death of comrades-in-arms, the realization that the enemy is doing in their native land, the tragic news from home - all this inevitably had an impact on the female psyche. And in such a situation, the question of whether it was necessary to go and carry out their combat mission did not arise: “... I must take up arms and take revenge myself. I already knew that I didn’t have any of my relatives left. My mother is gone…” one of the snipers recalled. Everywhere on the fronts, female snipers began to appear in 1943. At that time, the blockade of Leningrad had lasted for more than a year, the villages and villages of Belarus were burned, many relatives and comrades were killed. It was clear to everyone what the enemy had brought us. Sometimes people ask: “What did you need to have to be a sniper? Maybe it was some kind of predisposition of character, innate cruelty? Of course not. When you ask such questions, you need to try to “immerse yourself” in the psychology of a person who lived in wartime. Because they were the same ordinary girls! Like everyone else, they dreamed of marriage, arranged a modest military life, and took care of themselves. It's just that the war was a very mobilizing factor for the psyche.

- You said that the memory of a woman's feat was forgotten for many years. What has changed over time?

The first research papers on the participation of women in the Great Patriotic War began to appear only in the 1960s. Now, thank God, dissertations and monographs are being written about this. Women's feat is now, of course, established in the public mind. But, unfortunately, it's a bit late, because so many of them don't see it anymore. And many, perhaps, died forgotten, never knowing that someone wrote about them. In general, sources of personal origin are simply invaluable for studying the psychology of a person in war: memoirs, memoirs, interviews with veterans. After all, they talk about things that cannot be found in any archival document. It is clear that the war cannot be idealized, it was not only feats - it was both dirty and scary. But when we write or talk about it, we must always be as correct as possible, careful about the memory of those people. In no case should labels be attached, because we do not know even a thousandth of what really happened there. Many destinies were broken, distorted. And many veterans, in spite of everything that they had to endure, retained a clear look, sense of humor, optimism until the end of their days. We ourselves have a lot to learn from them. And most importantly - always remember them with great respect and gratitude.