Michael Rausch
University at Buffalo
WOMEN IN THE SOVIET
MILITARY: A SHINING EXAMPLE OF GENDER EQUALITYDURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
When Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa
in June 1941, the Nazi war machine received an interesting response from the
Soviet Union which was unheard of in European military history of the preceding
centuries. In response to the imperialist invasion of their homeland, tens of
thousands of Soviet women, the majority of whom were between the ages of 16 and
24, volunteered in mass to fight for their country. These women, socially
conditioned by the militaristic climate that pervaded the Soviet Union in the
1930s, felt a strong sense of duty to their homeland in this time of crisis.
One of these women volunteers, Elena Kolesova, prided herself on “not living
like her grandmothers” and not being raised as a bourgeoisie lady (Krylova
92). There was a sense among these
women that duty to the nation was an important responsibility that should not
be avoided.
By the end of the war, 520,000 Soviet
women would serve in the Red Army’s regular troops and another 300,000 would
serve in combat and home antiaircraft formations. 120,000 Soviet women would
serve in active duty combat roles. Compared to the rest of the world involved
in this war, the female participation found among the Soviet forces was unheard
of. The level of participation of females in the Soviet military far exceeded
the rate of participation for women in the German, American, and British
militaries (Krylova 3). Unlike the Soviet Union, women who served in western
militaries, such as the American military and the British military, did not
have women serve in combat positions. The Soviet Union was a shining beacon of
gender equality when it came to this issue compared to many other nations
involved in this struggle.
From this group of women volunteers
who served in the Soviet army during World War 2, two of them would go down in
history as trailblazers who helped transcend barriers for women in the field of
armed service. Lyudmila Pavlichenko, immortalized in
Woodie Guthrie’s song, “Miss Pavlichenko” in 1942, was one of these women. Between
June 1941 and June 1942, she fought as a sniper in Odessa and Sevastopol in the
Crimean Peninsula. During this term of service, she amassed 309 official kills,
which included 100 German officers. 36 of these kills came during counter
sniping assignments against enemy snipers. During these assignments, she hunted
in duels that lasted all day and night, sometimes for multiple days, and while
often having to maintain her position for periods of time stretching from 15-20
hours. She never lost one of these duels (King).
As a result of her impressive record,
the Soviet government decided to use her as an effective role model for
aspiring snipers. She was used in the 1942 Komsomol campaign to popularize the
sniper profession to many, including women. She personally trained future
Russian snipers (King). Pavlichenko spoke at many home front rallies and was
picked by the Young Communist League and Stalinist government to represent
Soviet youth in the United Kingdom, US, and Canada (Krylova 158-160).
Everywhere she went, she received gifts from dignitaries and admirers after
giving speeches to crowds of thousands. Journalists nicknamed her “Lady Death”
(Tomlinson).
The highlight of her trip to the US
was a meeting with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. She and the first lady would
become great personal friends for years after this meeting (Tomlinson). Her
story was a shining example of how high the Soviet Union allowed women to
socially climb. America and Great Britain did not provide such social ladders
for women.
Marina Raskova was another woman who
was able to climb to great heights socially thanks to the Soviet system. Known
as the Soviet Union’s Amelia Earhart, she established a new nonstop distance
record and opened up a new route across Siberia from Moscow to the Far East in
1938 (Noggle 15). For this impressive
feat, she was awarded Hero of the Soviet Union along with the two women she
navigated (Krylova 121). It was the first time any women had received the medal
and would be the only time until the start of World War 2.
Her celebrity status would further
increase with the signing of Executive Order 0099 by Joseph Stalin in October
1941. This order authorized the formation of three women’s air combat
regiments, a fighter regiment, a short range bomber regiment, and a night
bomber regiment. It introduced the category of female pilot (Krylova 122-123).
The state affirmed that the regiments were to be female not only in the air but
among the ground crews as well (Krylova 127). Due to her celebrity status,
Raskova was chosen to lead these regiments and was promoted to the rank of
major. She was given control over the Central Committee of the Young Communist
League and its network of local cells to help recruit women for this. Because
of her popularity, many women rushed into service to fly under her leadership
(Krylova 133-134).
Unfortunately for Raskova, she would
not live to see the end of the war. In early January 1943, she and her crew
died in a plane crash. To honor her, she was given a public military funeral in
Moscow and was buried near the Kremlin Wall. This was the highest posthumous
honor given by the Soviet government which was bestowed only upon very few
citizens (Krylova 142). Like Pavlichenko, Raskova received many social benefits
and privileges not afforded to women living in the other allied nations.
These women were able to achieve such
high social positions because the Soviet government made it a goal to tackle
sexism through its previous decades in power. Shortly after the Bolsheviks took
over, they passed the 1st Code on Marriage, the Family, and Guardianship in
October 1918, which called for complete equality between the sexes. A woman no
longer needed her husband’s permission to take a job, get an education, receive
a passport for work or residence, or execute a bill of exchange. Divorce was
granted at will, which was considered essential to an individual’s freedom.
Women were given much more freedom to write their own life’s script in being
able to obtain professional careers. Overall, the gender equality provisions
found in this legislation were stronger than the provisions found in any other
country at the time (Goldman 50-57). This progressive piece of legislation
helped lay the needed foundation for the promotion of women when the country
truly needed them in the 1930s.
In February 1931, Joseph Stalin, leader of the
Soviet Union, gave a speech directed towards Soviet industrial managers titled,
"On Soviet Industrialization". His speech hinted at the perceptions
held by the Soviet leadership towards the political climate that the nation
faced at the time. In his speech, Stalin mentioned that, “We are fifty or a
hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in
ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed" (Joseph V. Stalin. On
Soviet Industrialization Speech to Industrial Managers, February 1931).
Basically, the Soviet Union needed to become an industrial powerhouse quickly,
or else face destruction by foreign powers.
Bolstering his argument of why the
Soviet Union was in such a dire situation, he mentioned, "To slacken the
tempo would mean falling behind. And those who fall behind get beaten."
Highlighting the humiliating history Russia faced in being exploited by foreign
powers, Stalin mentioned that foreign powers, such as the British, French, and
the Japanese, were able to exploit Russia due to Russia's perceived
backwardness (Joseph V. Stalin. On Soviet Industrialization Speech to
Industrial Managers, February 1931). With other events in Soviet history, such
as the Russian Civil War, which pitted the Soviet Union and its Red Army
against the White army assisted by many global capitalist powers such as France
and England, there was a perceived necessity for the country to become a
superpower in order to avoid being beaten once again, like it had so many times
in the past. There was a feeling that the capitalist world wanted to see the
one example of a socialist state destroyed and this definitely impacted many
individuals (Fitzpatrick 10). This fear of external enemies characterized the
Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s (Fitzpatrick 7).
As historian Sheila Fitzpatrick
mentions in her book, Every Day Stalinism, "Backwardness was a very
important word in the Soviet Communist lexicon: it stood for everything that
belonged to old Russia and needed to be changed in the name of progress and
culture................It was the communists task to turn backward, agrarian
petty bourgeoisie Russia into a socialist, urbanized giant with modern
technology and a literate work force" (Fitzpatrick 15). Essential to this
was the construction of a strong military that would be able to insure the nation's
transition into the position of global super power and maintain its sovereignty
there in a hostile world. Past humiliations, such as the Russo-Japanese War of
1905 and World War 1, were to never happen again (Fitzpatrick 9).
Consequently, in order to prepare for
possible future war, the Soviet Union bolstered its military strength in the
1930s. During the Second Five Year Plan, the nation’s defense industries were
developed at a rate that was two and a half times faster than the rest of the
nation’s industries. The nation’s budget which was directed towards the army
and navy rose from 1,430 million rubles in 1933 to 56,800 million rubles in
1940. The Red Army increased tremendously in size. In 1934, the Red Army had
562,000 troops. By 1938, the Red Army contained 4.2 million men (Gray 277).
Under Stalin’s leadership, the Red Army, the back bone of the Soviet Union,
became a behemoth with an increased social presence as there were many staged
military demonstrations in places like Moscow’s Red Square throughout the 1930s
(Krylova 43-44).
Because there was a social environment
constructed around the threat of future war, everyone in the country was
mobilized for such a possible future. This militaristic drive manifested itself
particularly throughout the Soviet educational system, shaping people,
particularly women, in ways that laid the foundation for the breaking of
traditional bourgeoisie notions of gender roles that took place when World War
2 broke out. The Soviet school system and the Komosol All Union Communist
League during the 1930s stressed the necessity that the nation’s youth be
prepared for future war. Written into the Komosol charter, which constituted
one of the foundational reasons for the organization existence, was the Soviet
youth’s special duty to make the defense of the motherland into the supreme law
of its whole life (Krylova 40-41). This special duty was perceived to be an
absolute necessity, as In order to implement their ideas, the school system was
changed drastically. School children were trained in the use of rifles from the
ages of 12 and 13. This was aided by a 1932 All Union Communist Rifle Shooter
campaign which taught 1,000s of young people about rifles (Krylova 46-47).
Paramilitary training was also pushed in schools. Classes in socially useful
labor were also taught (Krylova 51). Starting in 1934, those who joined the
Komosol Central Committee had to pass a military exam which tested students in
military s hooting, grenade throwing, and other military skills (Krylova 53).
Integration of the educational system
was used to help this militaristic drive. Boys and girls were brought together
in these classes where they received the same military training. Boys and girls
shot rifles together, and undertook paramilitary training together. 1930s
Soviet education implemented a new era that worked to mold new socialist gender
relations with the intended goal being to “lift the restraints of wrongly
constructed gender roles”. Traditional gender stereotypes would be destroyed by
the Soviet education system, which meant that classes such as home economics,
typically a woman’s subject, were taken off the curriculum (Krylova 49-51).
In 1932, the Soviet government
appealed to its youth to join aviation. As Senior Lieutenant Nina Raspopova
wrote, as a part of this aviation push, she was sent in March 1932 by the
Regional Komsomol Committee to the Military Commissariat where she was offered
training in one of the nation's civil pilots schools. By March 1933, she was
flying U-2 aircraft. After her graduation from pilot’s school in 1933, she was
assigned to a glider school as a pilot instructor (Noggle 21-22). Another
woman, Anna Yegorova, received training through the Metrostroy Aeroclub
(Yegorova 25). The training she received through this club and the Ulyanovsk
Flying School helped her to become a skillful pilot when war with Nazi Germany
broke out (Yegorova 40-41). Thousands of women took part in the aviation
campaign, learning the profession alongside men, and it helped shape and define
the attitudes of these women. This
can be considered one of the reasons why there was such a rush of support by
women to join Raskova’s unit during World War 2.
Soviet news outlets reinforced this educational
push. Media outlets, such as Komsomolskaia Pravda, depicted paramilitary
training as a special opportunity for young women to test and reveal themselves
beyond bourgeoisie prejudices.
Komsomolskaia Pravda depicted stories and photos on top women rifle
experts in order to push this image. One of the most popular images in the
media was that of the young female shooter (Krylova 62).
Through the creation of such a social
system, the Soviet government was able to create an environment that allowed
for the promotion of thousands of Soviet women into positions they could not
have dreamt about previously when war came. Women such as Pavlichenko and
Raskova were able to cement their names in history thanks to the foundations
laid in Soviet society. When looking back at the overall narrative of female
soldiers in the Soviet military during this time period, in context of what was
happening to women in the other allied nations, the Soviet Union once again
proved itself as a world leader in the advancement of the working classes.
Bibliography:
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8.http://academic.shu.edu/russianhistory/index.php/Stalin_on_Rapid_Industrialization
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