11:20 , 14.07.2017
Rape during armed conflicts has always had a military-psychological significance as a means of intimidating and demoralizing the enemy.
At the same time, violence against women acted as a manifestation of sexist (that is, purely masculine) and racist syndromes, which gains special strength in large-scale stressful situations.
Military rape is different from peacetime rape. Sexual violence in war or during armed conflict can have a double meaning if carried out on a large scale. It serves not only to humiliate a specific person who is experiencing it, but also to demonstrate to the people of the enemy state that its political leaders and the army are unable to protect it. Therefore, such acts of violence, unlike those carried out in everyday life, do not occur secretly, but in public, often even with the forced presence of other people.
In general, there are three features that distinguish military sexual violence from rape committed in peacetime. The first is a public act. The enemy must see what is happening to his "property", because rapists often rape women in front of their own home. It is an act against the husband (symbolically the father of the nation or the leader of the enemy), not an act against the woman. The second is gang rape. Fighting comrades perform it in one team: each must be like the others. This reflects the ongoing group need to build and reproduce solidarity. In other words, drinking together, walking together, raping together. The third is the murder of a woman after sexual assault.
Documents available to researchers testify to the mass rape of women by Wehrmacht soldiers in the occupied territories. However, it is difficult to determine the real scale of sexual crime during the war caused by the occupiers on the territory of the USSR: primarily due to the lack of generalizing sources. In addition, in Soviet times, no attention was paid to this problem and no records of such victims were kept. Certain statistical data could have been given by women’s visits to doctors, but they didn’t turn to doctors for help, fearing public condemnation.
Back in January 1942, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V. Molotov noted: “There are no boundaries to the people's anger and indignation, which cause in the entire Soviet population and in the Red Army countless facts of despicable violence, despicable mockery of women's honor and mass murders of Soviet citizens and women, which are committed by German-fascist officers and soldiers ... Everywhere brutalized German bandits break into houses, rape women and girls in front of their relatives and their children, mock the raped ... ".
On the Eastern Front, group sexual violence against women was quite common among Wehrmacht soldiers. But not only German soldiers were engaged in this during the years of occupation, their allies did not disdain such behavior. Especially in this, according to the witnesses of the occupation, the Hungarian military "distinguished themselves". The Soviet partisans did not remain aloof from such crimes.
In Lvov, in 1941, 32 female garment factory workers were raped and then killed by German stormtroopers. Drunken soldiers dragged Lviv girls and young women into the park named after Kosciuszko and raped. Horrible scenes of sexual humiliation were experienced by Jewish women during the pogrom on July 1, 1941 in Lvov.
The angry crowd did not stop at anything, women and girls were undressed, driven in their underwear through the streets of the city, which, of course, humiliated their dignity and inflicted, in addition to physical, psychological trauma. For example, eyewitnesses told the following case: participants in the pogroms stripped a twenty-year-old Jewish girl, stuck a truncheon in her vagina, and forced her to march past the post office to the prison on Lontsky Street, where "prison work" was being carried out at that time.
The mass rape of women and girls in the villages of Galicia is described in the report of the Ukrainian rebels in October 1943:
“21 October 1943 p. respected pacifikatsia in the Valley. The pacification of transferring information about the SD Sondereinzatz in force of 100 people, investments from the Uzbeks themselves along with the wire of the official of the Security Policy in the Valley of Pole Yarosh. He was born Uzbek when he was 16 years old. In the evening before the village of Pogorilets, who made a terrible shooter, they wanted to catch people. People pochali tikati hto kudi mav zmogu. All men flowed into the forest. The Uzbeks rushed to the state's gifts and started shooting and catching chicken geese, and in the huts shukati for butter, sire, eggs, and meat, and in the pearl for moonshine, as if by force, they tried the women to cook and priladzhuvati їzhu їm. Having received good and sprinkled with moonshine moonshine, they climbed up on the woods and young women. They raped them there, they made them angry. There were many more vypadkіv known in the presence of relatives, who have sterilized them in the cords, and on the daughters of the most refined ways, they have calmed their own sound instincts. About a number of vypadkіv known years, dovіdatisya bіdіuvannі to become degraded admit. I would like to pacifikatsiyu translated earlier in the villages: Ilemnya, Grabiv and Lopyanka. "
The insurgents said the reason for such actions was the small number of people willing to go to Germany from these villages, and the actions of the partisans in the region.
No less scenes of sexual violence were committed in Western Ukraine by Soviet partisans. This is evidenced by many reports of UPA units, however, to illustrate the rape of women by red partisans, it is still worth citing Soviet sources - they are more reliable and, most importantly, objective, because the UPA reports and the memories of witnesses to a certain extent could "go too far" in this aspect. The documents of the "Ukrainian headquarters of the partisan movement" testify to the sexual violence against the civilian population by the "people's avengers".
An interesting point: in the reports of the partisan formations deployed in the Sumy, Chernigov, Kiev regions, there are few references to the rape of women, they begin to appear with rare frequency during raids in Western Ukraine. This is explained by the attitude of the Soviet partisans to this politically "unreliable" region and the unfriendly perception of advice on the part of the local population.
The overwhelming majority of Galicians considered them enemies and supported the Ukrainian rebels. It should not be dismissed that the partisans during the raid were not too worried about their reputation, they understood that, apparently, they would not soon return to the places of their crimes. Being in the same territory, it is worth thinking about establishing normal relations with the population in order to be able to receive food or clothing from it. During the raid, it was possible to take all this by force.
Rather thoroughly sexual violence is described in the memorandum of the former partisans of the unit to them. Budenny V. Buslaev and N. Sidorenko addressed to the head of the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR S. Savchenko.
The document says, in part:
“In the village of Dubovka, near Tarnopol, a woman aged 40-45 was raped by partisans Gardonov, Panasyuk, Mezentsev, detachment commander Bubnov and others. The victim's surname is unknown. In the village of Verkhobuzh, near Brody, foreman Mezentsev tried to rape a 65-year-old girl and her mother, took them outside at night and, under pain of weapons, demanded consent. He put him against the wall and fired from a machine gun over their heads, after which he raped ...
In one village, I don’t remember the name, near Snyatino, Sergeant Major Mezentsev, getting drunk, took out a pistol and tried to rape a girl who ran away, then he raped her grandmother, who was 60-65 years old ... Platoon commander Bublik Pavel himself personally and on it instigated the fighters, was engaged in the sale of vodka horses, which he took back before leaving ...
He systematically drank, did illegal searches on his own and demanded vodka from the population. He always did it with a weapon in his hands, shot in apartments, intimidated the population. In the village of Biskov (in the Carpathian Mountains) in the apartment of the headquarters of the unit, the headquarters chef fired at windows, kitchen utensils and the ceiling for wanting to rape the hostess, but she ran away. After which he relieved his need on the table ...
The robberies were usually carried out during searches under the pretext of whether there were "spies" or "Bandera members", and the search, as a rule, was carried out in places where watches and other valuable things could be. Such things as watches, razors, rings, expensive suits were just categorically taken away. The population usually knew about the approach of a Soviet partisan formation 30-40 km away. And in the last days one could come across villages left with some grandfathers, or even empty houses. "
Of course, the leadership of the NKVD demanded an explanation from the command of the Budennovsky unit. In the report, Captain Makarov, the commander of the For Kiev detachment, explained everything simply. He denied all the facts, and the partisans who wrote the note accused of treason (the complainants left the detachment and went to the rear of the Red Army) and ties with Bandera. By the way, this is a fairly common form of formal replies from the commanders of partisan detachments in case of accusations of looting, drunkenness or sexual violence. (The paradox - it turned out that Makarov did not suspect that there were two Bandera members in his detachment, and he “saw the light” only when they wrote a memo on violations in the unit). The case was probably "hushed up". At least, it was not possible to trace its further course due to the lack of documents indicating the punishments imposed on the defendants.
As you can see, women during the war years often became victims of rape by the soldiers of the opposing sides. In the post-war period, it was very difficult for them to return to a fulfilling life. Indeed, in the USSR, they did not receive proper medical care, in cases of pregnancy they could not get rid of the fetus - in the Soviet Union, abortion was prohibited by law. Many, unable to bear it, laid hands on themselves, someone moved to another place of residence, thus trying to protect themselves from gossip or people's sympathy and try to forget what they had experienced.
NOTES
Kjopp G. Why Was I Born a Girl ?: Sexual "Exploits" of Soviet Liberators. - M. 2011 .-- p. 138-139.
Meshcherkina E. Mass rape as part of the military ethos // Gender studies of the military ethos. - 2001. - No. 6. - with. 258.
In his memoirs, Officer Bruno Schneider told what instructions the German soldiers underwent before being sent to the Russian front. Regarding the women of the Red Army, the order read only one thing: "Shoot!"
Many German units did just that. Among those killed in battles and encirclement, a huge number of bodies of women in Red Army uniforms were found. Among them are many nurses, female paramedics. The marks on their bodies testified that many were brutally tortured, and only after they were shot.
Residents of Smagleevka (Voronezh Oblast) said after their liberation in 1943 that at the beginning of the war in their village, a young Red Army girl died a terrible death. She was badly injured. Despite this, the Nazis stripped her naked, dragged her out onto the road and shot her.
Horrible marks of torture remained on the body of the unfortunate woman. Before her death, her breasts were cut off, her entire face and hands were completely cut off. The woman's body was a bloody mess. They did a similar thing with Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Before the demonstrative execution, the Nazis kept her half-naked in the cold for hours.
Women in captivity
The captured Soviet soldiers - and women too - were supposed to be "sorted". The weakest, wounded and exhausted were subject to destruction. The rest were used in the most difficult jobs in concentration camps.
In addition to these atrocities, Red Army women were constantly raped. The highest military ranks of the Wehrmacht were forbidden to enter into intimate relations with the Slavs, so they did it secretly. The rank and file had a certain freedom here. Finding one woman, a Red Army soldier or a nurse, she could be raped by a whole company of soldiers. If the girl did not die after that, she was shot.
In concentration camps, the leadership often chose the most attractive girls from among the prisoners and took them to "serve". So did the camp doctor Orlyand in Shpalag (prisoner of war camp) No. 346 near the city of Kremenchug. The guards themselves regularly raped the female prisoners of the concentration camp.
This was the case in Shpalag No. 337 (Baranovichi), about which the head of this camp, Yarosh, testified during a tribunal session in 1967.
Sleeper No. 337 was distinguished by especially cruel, inhuman conditions of detention. Both women and men of the Red Army were kept for hours half naked in the cold. Hundreds of them were stuffed into lice-infested barracks. Anyone who could not stand it and fell, the warders immediately shot him down. Over 700 prisoners of war were annihilated in Shpalaga No. 337 every day.
Torture was applied to women prisoners of war, the cruelty of which medieval inquisitors could only envy: they were impaled, stuffed with hot red pepper, etc. Often they were bullied by German commandants, many of whom were clearly sadistic. The commandant of Shpalag # 337 was called “cannibal” behind her back, which spoke volumes about her character.
Not only torture undermined the morale and the last strength of the exhausted women, but also the lack of basic hygiene. There was no talk of any washing for the prisoners. Insect bites and purulent infections were added to the wounds. The female soldiers knew how the fascists were treating them, and therefore fought to the last.
Revelations from the front. Women in war: a truth that is not customary to talk about“I was on night duty ... I went to the seriously wounded ward. The captain is lying ... The doctors warned me before the watch that he would die at night ... He would not last 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 breasts… I haven't seen my wife for a long time…” I felt ashamed, I answered him something. She left and returned an hour later. He lies dead. And that smile on his face ... " 
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“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 about in the newspapers ...
For Victory Day, blogger radulova published the memoirs of female veterans from the book by Svetlana Aleksievich.
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“We drove for many days ... We went out with the girls at some station with a bucket to get some water. They looked around and gasped: one by one the trains were going, and there were only girls. They sing. They wave to us - some with kerchiefs, some with caps. It became clear: there were not enough men, they were killed in the ground. Or in captivity. Now we instead of them ... Mom wrote a prayer for me. 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 was conducting reconnaissance by force in the sector of our regiment. By dawn she had moved away, and a groan was heard from the no-man's land. Remained wounded. “Do not go, they will kill, - the soldiers did not let me in, - you see, it’s already dawn”. Didn't obey, crawled. She found the wounded man, dragged him for eight hours, tying him by the hand with a belt. Dragged a living one. The commander found out, announced in the heat of the moment five days of arrest for unauthorized absence. And the regiment's deputy commander reacted differently: "Deserves an award." At the age of nineteen I had a medal “For Courage”. At nineteen, she turned gray. At the age of nineteen, in the last battle, both lungs were shot, the second bullet passed between two vertebrae. My legs were paralyzed ... And they thought I was killed ... At nineteen ... I have a granddaughter like that now. I look at her and I don’t believe it. Baby! ”
“And when he appeared the third time, this one instant - it appears, then disappears, - 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, trembling and chills went all over my body. Some kind of fear ... Sometimes in my dreams and now this feeling comes back to me ... After the plywood targets, it was difficult to shoot at a living person. I can see it through the optical sight, I can see it well. As if he is close ... And something inside me is resisting ... Something doesn’t give, 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 business to hate and kill. Not ours ... I had to convince myself. Persuade…"
“And the girls were eager to go to the front voluntarily, but a coward himself will not go to war. They were brave, extraordinary girls. There are statistics: losses among frontline medics ranked second after losses in rifle battalions. In the infantry. What is it, for example, to get a wounded man out of the battlefield? I'll tell you now ... We went on the attack, and let's mow us down with a machine gun. And the battalion was gone. They were all lying. They were not all killed, many were wounded. The Germans are beating, the fire is not ceasing. Quite unexpectedly for everyone, first one girl jumps out of the trench, then the second, the third ... They began to bandage and drag the wounded, even the Germans were numb for a while with amazement. 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 together with his personal weapon. The first question in the medical battalion: where are the weapons? At the beginning of the war, he was lacking. A rifle, an assault rifle, a machine gun - that also had to be carried. In the forty-first order number two hundred and eighty-one was issued on presentation for rewarding for saving the lives of soldiers: for fifteen seriously wounded, taken from the battlefield together with personal weapons - the medal "For military merit", for the salvation of twenty-five people - the Order of the Red Star, for the salvation of the forty - the Order of the Red Banner, for the salvation of the 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 tears in his eyes. Believe it or not, my whole body tensed up from this shock, my illness, and I fell ill with “night blindness”, it happened from malnutrition, from nervous exhaustion, and so, my night blindness was gone. You see, I was healthy the next day, I recovered, through such a shock of my whole soul ... "
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“I was thrown by a hurricane wave against a brick wall. I lost consciousness ... When I regained consciousness, it was already evening. She raised her head, tried to squeeze her fingers - it seemed to move, barely ripped open her left eye and went to the department, covered in blood. In the corridor I met our older sister, she did not recognize me, she asked: “Who are you? Where?" She came closer, gasped and said: “Where have you been worn for so long, Ksenya? The wounded are hungry, but you are not. " They quickly bandaged my head, my left arm above the elbow, and I went to get dinner. In the eyes darkened, sweat poured hail. She began to distribute dinner, fell. They brought me to consciousness, and only one hears: “Hurry! Faster! ” And again - “Hurry! Faster! ” A few days later they took blood from me for the seriously wounded ”.
“We, young people, went to the front. Girls. I even grew up during the war. Mom measured it at home ... I grew ten centimeters ... "
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“We organized a nursing course and my father took my sister and me there. I am fifteen and my sister is fourteen. He said: “This is all that I can give to win. My girls ... ”There was no other thought then. A year later I got to the front ... "
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“Our mother had no sons ... And when Stalingrad was besieged, we voluntarily went to the front. Together. The whole family: mother and five daughters, and by this time the father had already fought ... "
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“I was mobilized, I was a doctor. I left with a sense of duty. And my dad was happy that his daughter was at the front. Protects the Motherland. Dad went to the recruiting office early in the morning. He went to receive 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 ... ”
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“I remember they let me go on leave. Before going to my aunt, I went to the store. Before the war, she was terribly fond of candy. I say:
- Give me candy.
The saleswoman looks at me like I'm crazy. I didn’t understand: what is a card, what is a blockade? All the people in the line turned to me, and I have a bigger rifle than me. When they were given to us, I looked and thought: "When will I grow up to this rifle?" And all of a sudden everyone began to ask, the whole queue:
- Give her candy. Cut out coupons from us.
And they gave me ”. 
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“And for the first time in my life it happened ... Ours ... Feminine ... I saw my blood like a cry:
- I was wounded ...
In the reconnaissance with us was a paramedic, already an elderly man. He to me:
- Where did you get hurt?
- I do not know where ... But the blood ...
Like a father, he told me everything ... I went on reconnaissance after the war for about fifteen years. Every night. And my dreams are like this: either my machine gun refused, then we were surrounded. You wake up - your teeth grind. Remember - where are you? Is it there or here? "
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“I was leaving 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 battle, read my prayers. The words are simple ... My words ... The meaning is the same, so that I return to mom and dad. I did not know real prayers, and I did not read the Bible. No one saw me praying. I am secretly. I prayed furtively. Carefully. Because ... We were different then, different people lived then. You understand?"
“Forms could not attack us: always in blood. My first wounded was Senior Lieutenant Belov, my last wounded was Sergei Petrovich Trofimov, sergeant of a mortar platoon. In the seventieth year, he came to visit me, and I showed my daughters his wounded head, which still has a large scar. In total, I took out four hundred and eighty-one wounded from under the fire. Some of the journalists calculated: a whole rifle battalion ... They carried men, two or three times heavier than us. And the wounded are even worse. You drag him and his weapons, and he is also wearing an overcoat and boots. Take on eighty kilograms and drag. Throw it off ... You go for the next one, and again seventy to eighty kilograms ... And so five or six times in one attack. And in you yourself forty-eight kilograms - ballet weight. Now I can't believe it ... "
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“I later became a squad leader. The whole department is made up of young boys. We are on a boat all day. The boat is small, there are no latrines. Guys, if necessary, can be across the board, and that's it. Well, how about me? A couple of times I was so patient that I jumped right overboard and swim. They shout: "Chief overboard!" Will pull out. Here is such an elementary trifle ... But what a trifle is it? I was treated later ...
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“She returned from the war gray-haired. Twenty-one years old, and I'm all white. I had a serious wound, concussion, I could hardly hear in one ear. Mom greeted me with the words: “I believed that you would come. I prayed for you day and night. " My brother was killed at the front. She cried: "It is the same now - give birth to girls or boys."
“And I’ll say something else ... The most terrible thing for me in the war is to wear men's panties. That was scary. And this is somehow for me ... I will not express myself ... Well, first of all, it is very ugly ... You are in a war, you are going to die for your Motherland, and you are wearing men's panties. In general, you look funny. It's ridiculous. Men 's panties were then worn long. Wide. They sewed from satin. Ten girls in our dugout, and all of them are in men's shorts. Oh my goodness! In winter and summer. Four years ... They crossed the Soviet border ... They finished off, as our commissar said at political studies, the beast in his own den. Near the first Polish village they changed our clothes, gave us new uniforms and ... And! AND! AND! We brought women's panties and bras for the first time. For the first time in the whole war. Ha-ah ... Well, I see ... We saw normal women's underwear ... Why aren't you laughing? Crying ... Well, why? "
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“At the age of eighteen, on the Kursk Bulge, I was awarded the medal“ For Military Merit ”and the Order of the Red Star, at the age of nineteen - the Order of the Patriotic War of the second degree. When a new replenishment arrived, the guys were all young, of course, they were surprised. They, too, are eighteen or nineteen years old, and they mockingly asked: "Why did you get your medals?" or "Have you been in battle?" They pester with jokes: "Do the bullets pierce the armor of the tank?" I then tied up one of these on the battlefield, under fire, and I remembered his last name - Dapper. His leg was broken. I put a splint on him, and he asks my forgiveness: "Sister, forgive me that I offended you then ..."
“Disguised themselves. We sit. We are waiting for the night to make an attempt to break through. And Lieutenant Misha T., the battalion commander was wounded, and he performed the duties of the battalion commander, he was twenty years old, began to remember how he loved to dance, play the guitar. Then he asks:
- Have you even tried it?
- What? What have you tried? - And I was terribly hungry.
- Not what, but who ... Babu!
And before the war there were such cakes. With that name.
- No-no ...
- And I haven't tried it either. When you die and you don’t know what love is ... They will kill us at night ...
- Fuck you, you fool! - It dawned on me what he was talking about.
They were dying for life, not yet knowing what life was. They read about everything only in books. I loved a movie about love ... "
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“She shielded a loved one from a mine fragment. The fragments are flying - it's just a split second ... How did she manage? She saved Lieutenant Petya Boychevsky, she loved him. And he stayed to live. Thirty years later, Petya Boychevsky came from Krasnodar and found me at our front-line meeting, and he told me all this. We went with him to Borisov and found the clearing where Tonya died. He took the earth from her grave ... Carried and kissed ... There were five of us, Konakovo girls ... And one I returned to my mother ... " 
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“A separate smoke-masking detachment was organized, commanded by the former commander of the torpedo boat battalion, Lieutenant-Commander 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: “The girls would rather hang up the smoke. It's quieter with him. " We drove out in cars with a special mixture, and at that time everyone hid in a bomb shelter. We, as they say, called fire on ourselves. The Germans were hitting this smokescreen ... "
“I'm bandaging the tanker ... The fight is on, the crash. He asks: "Girl, what is your name?" Even some kind of compliment. It was so strange for me to pronounce my name in this roar, in this horror - Olya ”.
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“And here I am the gun commander. And, therefore, me - in one thousand three hundred and fifty-seventh anti-aircraft regiment. At first, there was blood flowing from the nose and ears, the stomach was completely upset ... The throat dried up to vomiting ... It was not so scary at night, but very scary during the day. It seems that the plane is flying directly at you, precisely at your weapon. Ramming at you! This is one moment ... Now he will turn all, all of you into nothing. Everything is the end! "
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“And while they found me, I got severe frostbite on my feet. 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, each of them had such passports: what kind of relatives, where to report. They dug me out, put me on a raincoat, there was a sheepskin coat full of blood ... But no one paid attention to my legs ... For six months I was in the hospital. They wanted to amputate the leg, amputate above the knee, because gangrene began. And here I was a little cowardly, I did not want to remain a cripple. Why should I live? Who needs me? No father, no mother. A burden in life. Well, who needs me, a stump! I'll suffocate ... "
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“We got a tank there. We were both senior driver mechanics, and there should only be one driver in the tank. The command decided to appoint me as the commander of the IS-122 tank, and my husband as the senior mechanic-driver. And so we got to Germany. Both are injured. We have awards. There were a lot of girls-tankers in medium tanks, but in heavy tanks - I'm alone. "
“We were told to wear everything military, and I’m about fifty meters. I got into my trousers, and the girls tied me up with them ”.
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“While he hears ... Until the last moment you tell him that no, no, how can you die. You kiss him, hug him: what are you, what are you? He's already dead, his eyes are on the ceiling, and I'm whispering something else to him ... Calm down ... The names are now erased, gone from memory, but the faces remain ... "
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“We had a nurse captured ... A day later, when we recaptured that village, dead horses, motorcycles, armored personnel carriers were scattered everywhere. They found her: her eyes were gouged out, her chest was cut off ... They put her on a stake ... Frost, and she is white and white, and her hair is all gray. She was nineteen years old. In her backpack, we found letters from home and a rubber green bird. Children's toy ... "
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“Near Sevsk the Germans attacked us seven to eight times a day. And even that day I carried out the wounded with their weapons. She crawled to the last one, and his arm was completely broken. Dangling on pieces ... On veins ... All covered in blood ... He urgently needs to cut off his hand in order to bandage it. No other way. And I have no knife or scissors. The bag telepathically-telepathically on its side, and they fell out. What to do? And I gnawed this pulp with my teeth. She gnawed, bandaged up ... with a bandage, and the wounded man: “Hurry, sister. I will fight yet. " In a fever ... " 
“All the war I was afraid that my legs would not be crippled. I had beautiful legs. A man - what? He is not so scared even if he loses his legs. It's still a hero. Groom! And he will cripple a woman, so her fate will be decided. Women's destiny ... "
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“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 there we undress. I had a knitted sweater, so lice sat on every millimeter, in every loop. Look, it will make you sick. There are head lice, body lice, pubic lice ... I had all of them ... "
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“Near Makeyevka, in Donbass, I was wounded, wounded in the thigh. Climbed here is such a splinter, like a pebble, sits. I feel - blood, I folded an individual bag there too. And then I run, bandage. I’m ashamed to tell anyone, I wounded the girl, but where - in the buttock. In the ass ... At sixteen, it's a shame to tell someone. It's awkward to admit. Well, and so I ran, bandaged, until I passed out from loss of blood. Full boots leaked ... " 
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“A doctor came, did a cardiogram, and they ask me:
- When did you have a heart attack?
- What heart attack?
- Your whole heart is scarred.
And these scars, apparently, from the war. You go over the target, you are shaking all over. The whole body shivers, because there is fire below: fighters are shooting, anti-aircraft guns are shooting ... We flew mainly 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 firing 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, not twenty years old or twenty-three, like us: while the plane was refueled, the technician managed to take off his shirt and twist it off. It flowed from her, as if he had been in the rain. Now you can easily imagine what happened to us. You arrive and you can't even get out of the cockpit, they pulled us out. They couldn't carry the tablet anymore, they pulled it along the ground. "
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“We aspired ... We did not want to be said about us:“ Oh, these women! ” And we tried more than men, we still had to prove that we are not worse than men. And for a long time there was an arrogant, condescending attitude towards us: "These women will conquer ..."
“Wounded three times and shell-shocked three times. In the war, who dreamed about what: who to return home, who to reach Berlin, and I thought about one thing - to live until my birthday so that I would be eighteen years old. For some reason, I was scared to die earlier, not even live to be eighteen. I wore trousers, a cap, always torn off, because you always crawl on your knees, and even under the weight of a wounded man. It was hard to believe that one day it would be possible to get up and walk on the ground, and not crawl. It was a dream! Once the division commander came, saw me and asked: “What kind of teenager is this? What are you holding him for? He should be sent to study. "
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“We were happy when we took out the 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 know, they washed her off with grass ... We had our own peculiarities, girls ... The army did not think about it ... Our legs were green ... Well, if the foreman was an elderly man and understood everything, did not take excess linen from the duffel bag, and if he is young, he will definitely 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 are only two of them. These are only four sleeves ... "
“Come on… There are two hundred girls, and behind there are two hundred men. The heat is worth it. Hot Summer. Throw march - thirty kilometers. The heat is wild ... And after us there are red spots on the sand ... Traces are red ... Well, these things ... Ours ... How do you hide here? The soldiers follow and pretend that they do not notice anything ... They do not look at our feet ... Our trousers dried up as if they were made of glass. They cut it. There were wounds, and the smell of blood was heard all the time. We were not given anything ... We were guarding: when the soldiers would hang their shirts on the bushes. We'll steal a couple of pieces ... Later they guessed, laughed: “Chief, give us another underwear. The girls took ours. " There was not enough cotton wool and bandages for the wounded ... But not that ... Lingerie, perhaps, appeared only two years later. We wore men's shorts and T-shirts ... Well, let's go ... In boots! The legs are also fried. Let's go ... To the crossing, ferries are waiting there. We got to the crossing, and then they started bombing us. The most terrible bombing, men - who where to hide. We are called ... But we do not hear the bombing, we have no time for the bombing, we are more likely to go to the river. To the water ... Water! Water! And they sat there until they got wet ... Under the debris ... Here it is ... Shame was worse than death. And several 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 will shrug their shoulders like that - everything is immediately clear. When the battalion commander introduced that here, they say, you have a new platoon commander, everyone immediately howled: "Oooh ..." One even spat: "Ugh!" And a year later, when I was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the same guys who survived carried me in their arms to my dugout. They were proud of me. "
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“Accelerated march went to the mission. The weather was warm, we walked light. When the positions of the long-distance artillerymen began to pass, suddenly one jumped out of the trench and shouted: “Air! Frame!" I raised my head and looked for a “frame” in the sky. I don't find any plane. Quiet all around, not a sound. Where is that “frame”? Then one of my sappers asked permission to get out of line. I look, he goes to that gunner and gives him a slap in the face. Before I had time to figure out something, the artilleryman shouted: "Lads, they are beating ours!" Other gunners jumped out of the trench and surrounded our sapper. My platoon, without hesitation, threw the probes, mine detectors, duffel bags 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 drew my pistol and fired into the air. Officers jumped out of the dugout. It took a long time to calm everyone down. The captain came up to my platoon and asked: "Who is the senior 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 commissar 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. Front-line curse ... "
“Are you asking about love? I'm not afraid to tell the truth ... I was a papier, what stands for “field-field wife. Wife at war. Second. Illegal. The first battalion commander ... I didn't like him. He was a good man, but I did not love him. And I went to his dugout a few months later. Where to go? Some men are around, so it's better to live with one than to be afraid of everyone. In battle it was not so scary as after the battle, especially when we were resting, we were going to re-form. As they shoot, fire, they call: “Sister! Sister! ”, And after the battle, everyone is looking after you ... You can't get out of the dugout at night ... Did the other girls tell you this, or didn't they? Ashamed, I think ... They were silent. Proud! But it was all ... But they are silent about it ... Not accepted ... No ... I, for example, in the battalion there was one woman, lived in a common dugout. Together with men. They gave me a place, but how separate it is, the whole dugout is six meters away. I woke up at night from the fact that waving my hands, then one will give it on the cheeks, on the hands, then the other. I was wounded, I got to the hospital and waved my hands there. The nanny will wake up at night: "What are you doing?" Who will you tell? "
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“We buried him ... He was lying on a raincoat, he had just been killed. The Germans are firing at us. We need to bury it quickly ... Right now ... We found the old birches, chose the one that stood at a distance from the old oak. The biggest. Near her ... I tried to remember in order to return and then find this place. Here the village ends, here 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 struck: maybe he knew? Here ... It lies ... Now it will be lowered into the ground ... It will be buried. They will cover it with sand ... But I was terribly delighted at the thought, that maybe 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 Day he gave me a German chocolate bar. I haven't eaten 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'm glad ... I stand and smile to myself. Abnormal. I am glad that maybe he knew about my love ... She came up and kissed him. I have never kissed a man before ... It was the first ... "
“How did the Motherland meet us? I can't live without sobbing ... Forty years have passed, but my cheeks are still burning. The men were silent, and the women ... They shouted to us: “We know what you were doing there! Lured young n ... our men. Front-line b ... Military knots ... "They insulted in every way ... The dictionary is rich in Russian ... A guy escorts me from the dances, I suddenly feel bad, bad, my heart will beat. I go and go and sit in a snowdrift. "What's the matter?" - "Never mind. I danced ”. And these are my two wounds ... This is a war ... And we must learn to be gentle. To be weak and fragile, and legs in boots were carried - the fortieth size. It's unusual for someone to hug me. I got used to being responsible for myself. I waited for affectionate words, but did not understand them. They are like children to me. At the front, there is a strong Russian mate among men. I'm used to it. A friend taught me, she worked in the library: “Read poetry. Read Yesenin. "
“My legs disappeared ... My legs were cut off ... They rescued me there, in the forest ... The operation was in the most primitive conditions. They put him on the table to operate, and even there was no iodine, they sawed off his legs, both legs with a simple saw ... They put him on the table, and there was no iodine. Six kilometers away we went to another partisan detachment for iodine, and I was lying on the table. No anesthesia. Without ... Instead of anesthesia - a bottle of moonshine. There was nothing but an ordinary saw ... Carpenter's ... We had a surgeon, he himself also had no legs, he talked about me, other doctors said: “I bow before her. I have operated on so many men, but I have not seen such men. Will not cry out. " I held on ... I'm used to being strong in public ... "
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She ran to the car, opened the door and began to report:
- Comrade General, by your order ...
I heard:
- Set aside ...
She stretched out to 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 glances at his watch. I'm standing. He turns to his orderly:
- Where is that sapper commander?
I tried to report again:
- Comrade General ...
He finally turned to me and with annoyance:
- What the hell do I need you!
I understood everything and almost burst out laughing. Then his orderly was the first to guess:
- Comrade General, maybe she is the sapper commander?
The general stared at me.
- Who are you?
- Commander of the sapper platoon, comrade general.
- Are you a platoon leader? - he was indignant.
- Are your sappers working?
- That's right, Comrade General!
- I did it: general, general ...
He got out of the car, walked a few steps forward, then came back to me. He stood and measured it with his eyes. And to his orderly:
- Have you seen?
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“My husband was a senior machinist, and I was a machinist. For four years we went to the heating house, and the son went with us. He didn’t even see a cat in my house during the whole war. When I caught a cat near Kiev, our train was terribly bombed, five planes flew in, and he hugged her: “Sweet 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 have a real home now. ”
“Anya Kaburova is lying on the grass ... Our signalman. She is dying - the bullet has hit the heart. At this time, a wedge of cranes flies over us. Everyone raised their heads to the sky, and she opened her eyes. Looked: "What a pity, girls." Then she paused and smiled at us: "Girls, am I really going to die?" At this time, our postman, our Klava, is running, she shouts: “Don't die! Do not die! You have a letter from home ... ”Anya does not close her eyes, she is waiting ... Our Klava sat down next to her, 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 ... "We read the letter ... And only then did Anya close her eyes ..."
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“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 can't breathe: well, how will they say that at twenty-four o'clock her leg was not there? This is the front, that's understandable. And suddenly I see - the authorities are going to the dugout: a major, a colonel. All shake hands. Then, of course, we sat down in the dugout, drank, and each said his word that his wife found her husband in the trench, this is a real wife, there are documents. This is such a woman! Let me see a woman like that! They spoke such words, they all cried. I remember that evening all my life ... What do I still have left? Enrolled as a nurse. I went on reconnaissance with him. The mortar hits, I see - he fell. I think: killed or wounded? I run there, and the mortar hits, and the commander shouts: "Where are you going, you damn woman !!" I will 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. I was sitting at the same table. I baked some pies too. They talk with her husband, remember ... They started talking about our girls ... And I was like a roar: “Honor, say, respect. And the girls are almost all lonely. Unmarried. They live in communal apartments. Who took pity on them? Protected? Where have you all gone after the war? Traitors !! " In a word, I ruined their festive mood ... The chief of staff was sitting in your place. “Show me,” he pounded on the table with his fist, “who offended you. Just show it to me! " I asked for forgiveness: “Valya, I can’t tell you anything except tears.”
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“I reached Berlin with the army ... I returned to my village with two Orders of Glory and medals. I lived for three days, and on the fourth my mother 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 will drag one - I leave, then - another. And so I pull them in turn, because they are very seriously wounded, they cannot be left, both, as it is easier to explain, have their legs repulsed high, they are bleeding. Here the minute is precious, every minute. And suddenly, when I crawled away from the battle, there was less smoke, suddenly I found myself dragging one of our tankers and one German ... I was horrified: our people were dying there, and I was saving the German. I was in a panic ... There, in the smoke, I could not figure it out ... I see: a man is dying, a man is screaming ... A-ah ... They are both burnt, black. The same. And then I saw: someone else's medallion, someone else's watch, everything else. This form is damned. Now what? I pull our wounded man and think: "Should I return for the German or not?" I understood that if I leave him, he will soon die. From loss of blood ... And I crawled after him. I continued to drag both of them ... This is Stalingrad ... The most terrible battles. The best of the best. My you are brilliant ... There cannot be one heart for hate, and the second for love. In man, it is 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 went to the war for suitors, that everyone was having romances there. Although in fact, we have a sincere conversation, it was most often honest girls. Clean. But after the war ... After dirt, after lice, after death ... I wanted something beautiful. Bright. Beautiful women ... I had a friend, one beautiful girl, as I understand it now, loved him at the front. Nurse. But he did not marry her, he was demobilized and found himself another, smarter. 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 quilted jacket. We tried to forget the war. And they forgot their girls too ... "
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“My friend ... I will not give her last name, I will suddenly be offended ... The military assistant ... Three times wounded. The war ended, she entered the medical institute. She did not find any of her relatives, everyone died. She was terribly poor, washed the entrances at night to feed herself. But she did not admit to anyone that she was a disabled war veteran and had benefits, she tore up all documents. I ask: "Why did you break up?" She cries: "And who would take me in marriage?" “Well, well,” I say, “I did the right thing.” She cries even louder: “These pieces of paper would be useful to me now. I am seriously ill ”. Can you imagine? Crying. "
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“We went to Kineshma, this is the Ivanovo region, to his parents. I was traveling as a heroine, I never thought that it was possible to meet a front-line girl like that. We have gone so much, saved so much for mothers of children, for wives of husbands. And suddenly ... I learned the insult, I heard hurtful words. Before that, except for: “dear sister”, “dear sister”, I didn’t hear anything else ... We sat down to drink tea in the evening, the mother took her son to the kitchen and cried: “Who did you marry? On the front line ... You have two younger sisters. Who will marry them now? " And now, when I remember this, I want to cry. Imagine: I brought the record, I loved it very much. There were the following words: and you are entitled to walk in the most fashionable shoes ... It's about a front-line girl. I put it down, my older sister came up and smashed it in front of my eyes, they say, you have no rights. They destroyed all my front-line photographs ... That's enough for us front-line girls. And after the war we got it, after the war we had another war. Also scary. Somehow the men left us. Not covered. It was different at the front ”.
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“It was then they began to honor us, thirty years later ... We were invited to meetings ... And at first we were hiding, we didn't even wear awards. Men wore, but women did not. Men are victors, heroes, grooms, they had a war, and they looked at us with completely different eyes. Quite different ... We, I tell you, took away the victory ... The victory was not shared with us. And it was insulting ... It is not clear ... "
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“The first medal“ For Courage ”... The battle began. Heavy fire. The soldiers lay down. Command: “Forward! For the Motherland! ”, And they lie. Again the team, again they 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 ... "
Great Patriotic War - known and unknown: historical memory and modernity: materials of the international. scientific. conf. (Moscow - Kolomna, May 6-8, 2015) / otv. ed .: Yu. A. Petrov; Inst. stories Ros. acad. sciences; Grew up. ist. about; Chinese East about-in, etc. - 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 the day that made everyone think about what he chooses: submit to the enemy or fight him. And each person decided this question for himself, consulting only with his own conscience.
Archival documents show that the absolute majority of the population of the Soviet Union made the only correct decision: to devote all their strength to the fight against fascism, to defend their Motherland, their relatives and friends. Men and women regardless of age and nationality, non-party members 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.
Recall that in Art. The 13th Law on General Military Duty, adopted by the IV session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 1, 1939, the People's Commissariats of Defense and the Navy were given the right to enlist women with medical, veterinary and special technical training in the army and navy, as well as involve them in training camps. In wartime, women with this training could be drafted into the army and navy to carry out auxiliary and special services.
After the announcement of the beginning of the war, women, referring to this article, went to party and Komsomol organizations, military commissariats, and there persistently sought to be sent to the front. Among the volunteers who submitted applications in the early days of the war to be sent to the active army, up to 50% of the applications were from women. Women also went and enlisted in the militia.
Reading the statements of the girls-volunteers, which were submitted in the first days of the war, we see that for the youth the war seemed completely different than it turned out to be in reality. Most of them were confident that the enemy would be defeated in the near future, and therefore each aspired to rather participate in its destruction. Military enlistment offices at that time mobilized the population, following the instructions received, and refused to those who were under 18 years old, refused to those who were not trained in the military craft, and also refused girls and women until further notice. What did we know and know about them? About someone a lot, and about most of them we say "defenders of the homeland", 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 both men and women. This can be said about them in the words of M. Aliger:
Everyone had their own war
Your way forward, your areas of battle,
And each was himself in everything,
And only the goal was the same for all.
The historiography of the Great Patriotic War is rich in collections of documents and materials about this spiritual impulse of women in the USSR. A huge number of articles, monographs, collective works and memoirs about the labor of women during the war years in the rear, about exploits at the front, underground, in partisan detachments operating in the temporarily occupied territory of the Soviet Union have been written and published. 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. Currently, there is access to documents, not only little-known, but also to documents that require an objective approach to the study and impartial analysis. Doing about is not always easy due to the prevailing stereotype in relation to one or another phenomenon or personality.
The problem "Soviet women during the Great Patriotic War" was and remains in the field of view of historians, political scientists, writers and journalists. They wrote and are writing about women warriors, about women who replaced men in the rear, about mothers, less about those who took care of the evacuated children, who returned from the front with orders and were embarrassed to wear them, etc. And then the question is, why ? Indeed, back in the spring of 1943, the newspaper Pravda stated, referring to the decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), that “never in all past history has a woman participated so selflessly in defending 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 took a direct part in the course of hostilities. At the front in different periods, from 800 thousand to 1 million women fought, 80 thousand of them were Soviet officers. This was due to two factors. First, the unprecedented rise in patriotism of young people who were eager to fight the enemy who attacked their homeland. Secondly, the difficult situation that has developed on all fronts. The losses of Soviet troops in the initial war led to the fact that in the spring of 1942 a mass mobilization of women was carried out to serve in the active army and rear units. On the basis of the decree of the State Defense Committee (GKO), mass mobilization of women took place on March 23, April 13 and 23, 1942 to serve in the air defense forces, communications, internal security, on military highways, in the Navy and the Air Force, in the signal troops.
Healthy girls aged at least 18 were subject to mobilization. The mobilization was carried out under the control of the Central Committee of the Komsomol and local Komsomol organizations. At the same time, everything was taken into account: education (preferably at least 5 grades), membership in the Komsomol, health status, and the absence of children. Most of the girls were volunteers. True, there were cases of unwillingness to serve in the Red Army. When it was found out at the collection points, the girls were sent home to the place of their call. MI 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 above average men, there’s nothing special ... because you were selected from many millions ... Men were not chosen, they threw in the seine 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 up. But it is known that over 550 thousand women became warriors only at the call of the Komsomol. Over 300 thousand patriots were drafted into the air defense forces (this is over ¼ of all fighters). Under the auspices of the Red Cross, 300,000 nurses from Osh, 300,000 nurses, 300,000 nurses, and more than 500,000 air defense personnel were trained in the military medical institutions of the Red Army's sanitary service. In May 1942, a GKO decree was adopted on the mobilization of 25 thousand women in the Navy. On November 3, the Central Committee of the Komsomol conducted a selection of Komsomol and non-Komsomol members of the formation of a female volunteer rifle brigade, a reserve regiment and the Ryazan infantry school. The total number of those mobilized there was 10898 people. On December 15, the brigade, the reserve regiment and the courses began normal training. During the war, there were five mobilizations among women communists.
Not all women, of course, took a direct part in the hostilities. Many served in various logistic services: economic, medical, staff, etc. Nevertheless, a significant number of them directly participated in hostilities. At the same time, the spectrum of activities of women warriors was quite diverse: they took part in raids of reconnaissance and sabotage groups and partisan detachments, were medical instructors, signalmen, anti-aircraft gunners, snipers, machine gunners, drivers of cars and tanks. The women served in the aviation. They were pilots, navigators, gunners-radio operators, armed men. At the same time, female aviators fought both in the composition of ordinary "male" aviation regiments, and in separate "female" ones.
During the Great Patriotic War, female military formations first appeared in the Armed Forces of our country. Three air regiments were formed from female volunteers: the 46th Guards Night Bomber, the 125th Guards Bomber, 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 and others. The 101st long-range aviation regiment was commanded by Hero of the Soviet Union B.S. Grizodubova. The Central Women's Sniper Training School provided the front with 1,061 snipers and 407 sniper instructors. Graduates of this school killed over 11,280 enemy soldiers and officers during the war. In the youth divisions of the Vsevobuch, 220 thousand girls-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. The personnel included 2,899 women. 20 thousand women served in the Special Moscow Air Defense Army. The documents in the archives of the Russian Federation show how difficult this service is.
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 there were 43.5%. It was estimated that female medical instructors of rifle companies, medical battalions, and artillery batteries helped over 72% of the wounded and about 90% of the sick soldiers to return to duty. Medical women served in all branches of the military - in the aviation and marines, on the warships of the Black Sea Fleet, the Northern Fleet, the Caspian and Dnieper flotillas, in floating naval hospitals and hospital trains. Together with the horsemen, they went into deep raids on the rear of the enemy, were in partisan detachments. We reached Berlin with the infantry and took part in the storming of the Reichstag. For special courage and heroism, 17 medical women 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
During the war, the city of Kaluga 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 at the monument.
In the literature, it is practically not mentioned that during the war years about 20 women became tankers, three of whom graduated from the country's tank schools. Among them, I.N. Levchenko, who commanded a group of light tanks T-60, E.I. Kostrikova - the commander of a tank platoon, and at the end of the war, the commander of a tank company. And the only woman who fought in 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 Evgeniya 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 foreign woman - 18-year-old Anela Kzhivon, a shooter of the female company of machine gunners of the female infantry battalion of the 1st Polish Infantry Division of the Polish Army. The title was awarded posthumously in November 1943.
Anela Kzhivon, who has Polish roots, was born in the village of Sadovoe, Ternopil region of 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, Anela was enlisted as a rifleman in the company of machine gunners of the 1st Polish Division named after Tadeusz Kosciuszko. The company guarded the division headquarters. In October 1943, the division fought offensive battles in the Mogilev region. On October 12, during the next German airstrike on the division's positions, the shooter Kzhivon was on duty at one of the posts, hiding in a small trench. Suddenly she saw that the command vehicle was on fire from the explosion. Knowing that it contains maps and other documents, Anela rushed to save them. In the covered body, she saw two soldiers stunned by the blast. Anela pulled them out, and then, choking in the smoke, burning her face and hands, began to throw the folders with documents out of the car. She did this until the car exploded. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of November 11, 1943, she was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. (Photo courtesy of the Krasnoyarsk Museum of Local Lore. Natalya Vladimirovna Barsukova, Ph.D., Associate Professor of the Department of Russian History of the Siberian Federal University)
200 female warriors were awarded the Orders of Glory II and III degrees. Four women became full Knights of Glory. In recent years, we have almost never named them by name. In the year of the 70th anniversary of the Victory, we will repeat their names. They are Nadezhda Aleksandrovna Zhurkina (Kiek), Matryona Semyonovna Necheporchukova, Danuta Yurgio Stanilienė, 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 indicate 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 occupation, having stood up to fight the enemy.
At the end of 1941 there were only about 90 thousand partisans behind enemy lines. The issue of numbers is a special issue, and we refer to the official published data. By the beginning of 1944, 90% of the partisans were men and 9.3% were women. The question of the number of female partisans gives a scatter in the numbers. According to data from later years (obviously, according to updated data), in total during the war there were over 1 million partisans in the rear. Women accounted for 9.3% of them, i.e. over 93,000 people. In the same source there is another figure - over 100 thousand women. There is one more feature. The percentage of women in partisan units was not the same everywhere. So, in the units in the Ukraine it was 6.1%, in the occupied regions of the RSFSR - from 6% to 10%, in the Bryansk region - 15.8% and in Belarus - 16%.
Our country was proud during the war years (and now it is also proud) of such heroines of the Soviet people as partisans Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Liza Chaikina, Antonina Petrova, Anya Lisitsina, Maria Melentyeva, Ulyana Gromova, Lyuba Shevtsova and others. But many are still not known or know little about many years of checks on their identities. Girls - nurses, doctors, partisans-intelligence officers - won great authority among the partisans. But they treated them with a certain distrust and with great difficulty allowed them to participate in military operations. At first, it was widely believed in partisan detachments that girls could not be demolitionists. However, dozens of girls have mastered this difficult business. Among them is Anna Kalashnikova, the head of the subversive group of a partisan detachment in the Smolensk region. Sofya Levanovich commanded a subversive group of a partisan detachment in the Oryol region and derailed 17 enemy echelons. The Ukrainian partisan Dusya Baskina had 9 derailed enemy trains on her account. 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, destroying the Nazis, the order of General von Reichenau was in force, who demanded to destroy the partisans “... to use all means. All captured partisans of both sexes in military uniform or in civilian clothes should be publicly hanged. " It is known that the fascists were especially afraid of women and girls - residents of villages and villages in the area where partisans operated. In their letters home, which fell into the hands of the Red Army, the invaders wrote frankly that "women and girls act like hardened warriors ... In this regard, we would have to learn a lot." In another letter, Chief Corporal Anton Prost in 1942 asked the question: “How long will it take for us to wage this kind of war? After all, we - a combat unit (Western Front p / p 2244 / B. - N.P.) are opposed here by the entire civilian population, including women and children! .. "
And as if confirming this idea, the German newspaper "Deyche Algeimeine Zeitung" of May 22, 1943 stated: "Even the seemingly harmless women picking berries and mushrooms, the peasant women heading for the city are partisan intelligence officers ..." Risking their lives, the partisans performed assignments ...
According to official data, as of February 1945, 7,800 women 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 numbers. The number of awardees is much higher, since the process of awarding, or rather, consideration of repeated submissions for the award, continued in the 90s. An example can be the fate of Vera Voloshina.
Vera Voloshin
The girl was in the same reconnaissance group as Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Both of them on the same day went on a mission from the intelligence department of the Western Front. Voloshin was wounded and fell behind her group. Was captured. She was executed, like Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, on November 29. Voloshin's fate remained unknown for a long time. Thanks to the search work of the journalists, the circumstances of her capture and death were established. By the decree of the President of the Russian Federation in 1993, V. Voloshina (posthumously) was awarded the title of Hero of Russia.
Vera Voloshin
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 indication of the Central Broadcasting Center. 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 then, there are disputes about its number and its composition. The number of its members ranges from 70 to 150 people.
There was a time when it was believed that the larger the organization, the more effective it was. And few people thought about how a large underground youth organization could operate under occupation without giving away its actions. Unfortunately, a number of underground organizations are waiting for their researchers, because little or nothing has been written about them. But the fates of women underground are hidden in them.
In the fall of 1943, Nadezhda Troyan and her fighting friends managed to carry out the sentence passed 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 often remembered.
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 a battle in the village of Lomovochi, Minsk region, the partisan RI Shershneva (1925) closed the embrasure of the German bunker, becoming the only woman (according to others data - one of two) who performed a similar feat. Unfortunately, in the history of the partisan movement there are pages where there is only a listing of military operations, the number of partisans who participated in it, but, as they say, "behind the scenes" is the majority of those who specifically took part in the implementation of partisan raids. There is no way to name everyone now. They are seldom remembered, privates, living and dead, despite the fact that they live somewhere near us.
In the hustle and bustle of everyday life in the past few decades, our historical memory to the everyday life of the past war has somewhat faded. They rarely write and remember about the privates of Victory. As a rule, only those who have accomplished the 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 covered 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 the partisan detachment operating in the Narva region).
Back in 1945, during the beginning of the demobilization of female warriors, it was said that little was written about them, female soldiers, during the war years, and now, in peacetime, they may even be forgotten altogether. On July 26, 1945, the Komsomol Central Committee hosted a meeting of female soldiers who had completed their service in the Red Army with the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR M.I. Kalinin. A transcript of this meeting has been preserved, which is named as "a conversation between MI Kalinin with the girls-soldiers." 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, the 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 warrior girls, N. Meklin (Kravtsova) said what many were talking and thinking about, she said what they are talking about now. In her speech, there was, as it were, a sketch 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 has been written about the partisan girls: Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Liza Chaikina, about Krasnodon residents. Nothing has been written about the girls of the Red Army and Navy. But this, perhaps, would be nice for those who fought, it would be useful for those who did not fight, and important for our posterity and history. Why not create a documentary film, by the way, the Central Committee of the Komsomol has long thought to do this, in which to reflect the female combat hardening, as, for example, in the defense of Leningrad, to reflect the best women working in hospitals, to show snipers, girls-traffic controllers, etc. ... In my opinion, literature and art in this respect owe a debt to the warrior girls. That's basically all I wanted to say. "
Natalia Fedorovna Meklin (Kravtsova)
These proposals were implemented in part or not in full. Time has put other problems on the agenda, and much of what the female warriors proposed in July 1945 await their authors now.
The war pushed some people apart and brought others closer together. There were partings and meetings during the war. There was love in the war, there were betrayals, everything happened. 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 condemned anyone in the war for this. But when the war ended and demobilized women warriors began to return to their homeland, with orders, medals and wounds stripes on their chests, the civilian population often threw insults into their eyes, calling them "PPZH" (field-field wife), or poisonous questions: “What did you receive awards for? How many husbands did you have? " etc.
In 1945, this became widespread and caused even among the demobilized men a wide protest and complete powerlessness, how to deal with it. The Central Committee of the Komsomol began to receive letters with a request to "put things in order in this matter." The Central Committee of the Komsomol outlined a plan on the issue raised - what to do? It noted that "... we do not always and not everywhere propagandize the feats of girls enough among the people, we tell the population little) and young people about the enormous contribution that girls and women made to our victory over fascism."
It should be noted that then plans were drawn up, lectures were edited, but the severity of the issue practically did not diminish for many years. Warrior girls were embarrassed to put on their orders and medals, took them off their tunics and hid them in boxes. And when their children grew up, the children went through expensive awards and played with them, often not knowing what their mothers received them for. If during the Great Patriotic War women-soldiers were spoken about in the reports of the Sovinformburo, they wrote in newspapers, 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 her appeared only on the eve of March 8. Researchers have tried to find an explanation for this, but their interpretation cannot be agreed 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 MI Kalinin in July 1945 at a meeting in the Central Committee of the Komsomol with girls-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 a peaceful life, of the search for their professions, etc. And at the same time he advised: “Do not be arrogant about your future practical work. You don’t talk about your merits, but let them talk about you - it’s better. ” With reference to the work of the German researcher B. Fieseler "Woman in War: An Unwritten History", these above-mentioned words of MI Kalinin were interpreted by the Russian researcher O.Yu. Nikonova as a recommendation "to 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 MI Kalinin's speech in Russian.
At present, attempts are being made (and quite successfully) to revise the problem of women's participation in the Great Patriotic War, in particular, what drove them when they applied for enrollment in the Red Army. The term “mobilized patriotism” appeared. At the same time, a number of problems or not fully explored plots remain. If they write about women warriors more often; especially about the Heroes of the Soviet Union, about women of the labor front, about women in the rear there are fewer and fewer generalizing works. Obviously, it is forgotten that one could “participate directly in the war, and one could participate, working in industry, in various military and logistical institutions”. In the USSR, assessing the contribution made by Soviet women to the defense of the Motherland, they were guided by the words of the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev, who said: “The image of a woman fighter with a rifle in her hands, at the helm of an airplane, the image of a nurse or a doctor with shoulder straps on her shoulders will live in our memory as a shining example of dedication and patriotism. " That's right, figuratively, but ... where are the women in the rear? What is their role? Let us recall that what MI Kalinin wrote about in his article “On the moral character of our people”, published in 1945, directly applies to women in the rear: “… all the previous fades before the great epic of the current war, before heroism the sacrifice of Soviet women, showing civic valor, endurance in the loss of loved ones and enthusiasm in the struggle with such strength and, I would say, majesty, which has never been observed in the past. "
On the civil valor of women in the home front in 1941-1945. can be said in the words of M. Isakovsky, dedicated to "Russian Woman" (1945):
... But can you tell about it -
What years have you lived!
What an immeasurable weight
Lay on women's shoulders! ..
But without facts it is difficult for the current generation to understand. Let us remind you that under the slogan "Everything for the front, everything for victory!" all the collectives of the Soviet rear worked. Sovinformburo in the most difficult time of 1941-1942. in her summaries, along with reports on the exploits of Soviet soldiers, she also reported on the heroic deeds of home front workers. In connection with leaving for the front, in the people's militia, in extermination battalions, the number of men in the national economy of Russia by the fall of 1942 fell from 22.2 million to 9.5 million.
The men who went to the front were replaced by women and teenagers.
Among them were 550 thousand housewives, pensioners, 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 the survey volume there are interesting figures that do not need commentary on the increase in the share of female labor throughout the country, especially in the first two years of the war. early 1941 to 33% at the end of 1942, compressor drivers - 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 some enterprises, where only men worked before the war. There were no enterprises, workshops, and plots in industry where women would not work, there were no 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 communications workers, he reached 69.1% in 1945.The proportion of women among workers and apprentices in industry in 1945 in the professions of drillers and revolvers reached 70% (in 1941 it was 48%), and among turners - 34%, against 16.2 % in 1941. The 145 thousand Komsomol youth brigades of the country employed 48% of women from the total number of young people. Only in the course of the competition for increasing labor productivity, for the manufacture of superior weapons for the front, over 25 thousand women were awarded orders and medals of the USSR.
Warriors and women in the home front began to tell about themselves, their friends, with whom they shared their joys and troubles, years after the end of the war. On the pages of these collections of memoirs, which were published locally and in the capital's publishing houses, it was primarily about heroic military and labor exploits and very rarely about the everyday difficulties of the war years. And only decades later they began to call things by their proper names and did not hesitate to remember what difficulties Soviet women had to overcome, how they had to overcome them.
I would like our compatriots to know the following: on May 8, 1965, in the year of the 30th anniversary of the Great Victory, by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the SR, International Women's Day on March 8 became a festive day off “to commemorate the outstanding merits of Soviet women ... in defending the Motherland during the Great Patriotic War , their heroism and dedication at the front and in the rear ... ".
Turning to the problem "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, they set one task: to help human memory, so that the "image of a Soviet woman - a patriot, a fighter, a hard worker, a soldier's mother" is forever preserved in the memory of the people.
NOTES
See: Law on General Military Duty, [September 1, 1939]. M., 1939. Art. 13.
Truth. 1943.8 March; Russian State Archive of Social and 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 Komsomol with demobilized girls-soldiers.
The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945 .: encyclopedia. M., 1985.S. 269.
RGASPI. F. M-1. He. 53.D. 17.L. 49.
The Great Patriotic War. 1941-1945 .: encyclopedia. P. 269.
See: Women of the Great Patriotic War.
The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945 .: encyclopedia. P. 440.
In the same place. P.270.
URL: Famhist.ru/Famlrist/shatanovskajl00437ceO.ntm
RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53.D. 13.L. 73.
The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945 .: encyclopedia. P. 530.
In the same place. P.270.
URL: 0ld. Bryanskovi.ru/projects/partisan/events.php?category-35
RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 53.D. 13. L. 73–74.
In the same place. D. 17.L. 18.
In the same place.
In the same place. F. M-7. Op. 3.D. 53.L. 148; The Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945 .: encyclopedia. C. 270; URL: http: //www.great-country.ra/rabrika_articles/sov_eUte/0007.html
For more details see: "Young Guard" (Krasnodon) - an artistic image and historical reality: collection of articles. documents and materials. M, 2003.
Heroes of the Soviet Union [Electronic resource]: [forum]. URL: Poker Strategy.com
RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 5.D. 245. L. 1–30.
In the same place. L. 11.
In the same place.
In the same place. Op. 32. D. 331. L. 77–78. Highlighted by the author of the article.
There. Op. 5.D. 245.L. 30.
See: B. Fieseler, Women in War: An Unwritten History. Berlin, 2002.S. 13; URL: http://7r.net/foram/thread150.html
Kalinin M.I.Selected works. M., 1975.S. 315.
There. P. 401.
In the same place.
All-Russian memory book, 1941-1945 M., 2005. Survey volume. P. 143.
The Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 .: encyclopedia. P. 270.
All-Russian memory book, 1941-1945 Survey volume. P. 143.
RGASPI. F. M-1. Op. 3.D. 331 a. L. 63.
In the same place. Op. 6.D. 355.L. 73.
Quote: after: 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.
In his memoirs, Officer Bruno Schneider told what instructions the German soldiers underwent before being sent to the Russian front. Regarding the women of the Red Army, the order read only one thing: "Shoot!"
Many German units did just that. Among those killed in battles and encirclement, a huge number of bodies of women in Red Army uniforms were found. Among them are many nurses, female paramedics. The marks on their bodies testified that many were brutally tortured, and only after they were shot.
Residents of Smagleevka (Voronezh Oblast) said after their liberation in 1943 that at the beginning of the war in their village, a young Red Army girl died a terrible death. She was badly injured. Despite this, the Nazis stripped her naked, dragged her out onto the road and shot her.
Horrible marks of torture remained on the body of the unfortunate woman. Before her death, her breasts were cut off, her entire face and hands were completely cut off. The woman's body was a bloody mess. They did a similar thing with Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Before the demonstrative execution, the Nazis kept her half-naked in the cold for hours.
Women in captivity
The captured Soviet soldiers - and women too - were supposed to be "sorted". The weakest, wounded and exhausted were subject to destruction. The rest were used in the most difficult jobs in concentration camps.
In addition to these atrocities, Red Army women were constantly raped. The highest military ranks of the Wehrmacht were forbidden to enter into intimate relations with the Slavs, so they did it secretly. The rank and file had a certain freedom here. Finding one woman, a Red Army soldier or a nurse, she could be raped by a whole company of soldiers. If the girl did not die after that, she was shot.
In concentration camps, the leadership often chose the most attractive girls from among the prisoners and took them to "serve". So did the camp doctor Orlyand in Shpalag (prisoner of war camp) No. 346 near the city of Kremenchug. The guards themselves regularly raped the female prisoners of the concentration camp.
This was the case in Shpalag No. 337 (Baranovichi), about which the head of this camp, Yarosh, testified during a tribunal session in 1967.
Sleeper No. 337 was distinguished by especially cruel, inhuman conditions of detention. Both women and men of the Red Army were kept for hours half naked in the cold. Hundreds of them were stuffed into lice-infested barracks. Anyone who could not stand it and fell, the warders immediately shot him down. Over 700 prisoners of war were annihilated in Shpalaga No. 337 every day.
Torture was applied to women prisoners of war, the cruelty of which medieval inquisitors could only envy: they were impaled, stuffed with hot red pepper, etc. Often they were bullied by German commandants, many of whom were clearly sadistic. The commandant of Shpalag # 337 was called “cannibal” behind her back, which spoke volumes about her character.
Not only torture undermined the morale and the last strength of the exhausted women, but also the lack of basic hygiene. There was no talk of any washing for the prisoners. Insect bites and purulent infections were added to the wounds. The women soldiers knew how the Nazis treated them, and therefore tried not to be captured. They fought to the last.