The female part of our multinational people, together with men, children and old people, bore on their shoulders all the hardships of the Great War. Women wrote many glorious pages in the chronicle of the war.
Women were on the front line: doctors, pilots, snipers, in air defense units, signalmen, intelligence officers, drivers, topographers, reporters, even tank crews, artillerymen and served in the infantry. Women actively participated in the underground, in the partisan movement.
Women took on many “purely male” professions in the rear, since men went to war, and someone had to stand behind a machine, drive a tractor, become a railway lineman, master the profession of a metallurgist, etc.
Figures and facts
Military service in the USSR is an honorable duty not only for men, but also for women. This is their right written in Art. 13th Law on General Military Duty, adopted by the IV session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on September 1, 1939. It states that the People's Commissariats of Defense and Navy are given the right to recruit women into the army and navy who have medical, veterinary and special - technical training, as well as attracting them to training camps. In wartime, women who have the specified training may be drafted into the army and navy to perform auxiliary and special service. The feeling of pride and gratitude of Soviet women to the party and government regarding the decision of the session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was expressed by Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR E.M. Kozhushina from the Vinnitsa region: “All of us, young patriots,” she said, “are ready to speak out in defense of our beautiful Motherland. We women are proud that we are given the right to protect it on an equal basis with men. And if our party, our government calls, then we will all come to the defense of our wonderful country and give a crushing rebuff to the enemy.”
Already the first news of Germany’s treacherous attack on the USSR aroused boundless anger and burning hatred of their enemies among women. At meetings and rallies held throughout the country, they declared their readiness to defend their Motherland. Women and girls went to party and Komsomol organizations, to military commissariats and there they persistently sought to be sent to the front. Among the volunteers who applied to be sent to the active army, up to 50% of the applications were from women.
During the first week of the war, applications to be sent to the front were received from 20 thousand Muscovites, and after three months, 8,360 women and girls of Moscow were enrolled in the ranks of the defenders of the Motherland. Among the Leningrad Komsomol members who submitted applications in the first days of the war with a request to be sent to the active army, 27 thousand applications were from girls. More than 5 thousand girls from the Moskovsky district of Leningrad were sent to the front. 2 thousand of them became fighters of the Leningrad Front and selflessly fought on the outskirts of their hometown.
Rosa Shanina. Destroyed 54 enemies.
Created on June 30, 1941, the State Defense Committee (GKO) adopted a number of resolutions on the mobilization of women to serve in the air defense forces, communications, internal security, on military roads... Several Komsomol mobilizations were carried out, in particular the mobilization of Komsomol members in the Military Navy, Air Force and Signal Corps.
In July 1941, over 4 thousand women of the Krasnodar Territory asked to be sent to the active army. In the first days of the war, 4 thousand women of the Ivanovo region volunteered. About 4 thousand girls from the Chita region, over 10 thousand from the Karaganda region became Red Army soldiers using Komsomol vouchers.
From 600 thousand to 1 million women fought at the front at different times, 80 thousand of them were Soviet officers.
The Central Women's Sniper Training School provided the front with 1,061 snipers and 407 sniper instructors. Graduates of the school destroyed over 11,280 enemy soldiers and officers during the war.
At the end of 1942, the Ryazan Infantry School was given an order to train about 1,500 officers from female volunteers. By January 1943, over 2 thousand women arrived at the school.
For the first time during the Patriotic War, female combat formations appeared in the Armed Forces of our country. 3 aviation regiments were formed from female volunteers: 46th Guards Night Bomber, 125th Guards Bomber, 586th Air Defense Fighter Regiment; Separate women's volunteer rifle brigade, Separate women's reserve rifle regiment, Central women's sniper school, Separate women's company of sailors.
Snipers Faina Yakimova, Roza Shanina, Lidiya Volodina.
While near Moscow, the 1st Separate Women's Reserve Regiment also trained motorists and snipers, machine gunners and junior commanders of combat units. There were 2899 women on staff.
20 thousand women served in the Special Moscow Air Defense Army.
Some women were also commanders. One can name Hero of the Soviet Union Valentina Grizodubova, who throughout the war commanded the 101st Long-Range Aviation Regiment, where men served. She herself made about two hundred combat missions, delivering explosives, food to the partisans and removing the wounded.
The head of the ammunition department of the artillery department of the Polish Army was engineer-colonel Antonina Pristavko. She ended the war near Berlin. Among her awards are the orders: "Renaissance of Poland" IV class, "Cross of Grunwald" III class, "Golden Cross of Merit" and others.
In the first war year of 1941, 19 million women were employed in agricultural work, mainly on collective farms. This means that almost all the burdens of providing food for the army and the country fell on their shoulders, on their working hands.
5 million women were employed in industry, and many of them were entrusted with command posts - directors, shop managers, foremen.
Culture, education, and health care have become a matter of concern mainly for women.
Ninety-five women in our country have the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Our cosmonauts are among them.
The largest representation of participants in the Great Patriotic War among other specialties were female doctors.
Of the total number of doctors, of whom there were about 700 thousand in the active army, 42% were women, and among surgeons - 43.4%.
More than 2 million people served as middle and junior medical workers at the fronts. Women (paramedics, nurses, medical instructors) made up the majority - over 80 percent.
During the war years, a coherent system of medical and sanitary services for the fighting army was created. There was a so-called doctrine of military field medicine. At all stages of the evacuation of the wounded - from the company (battalion) to hospitals in the rear - female doctors selflessly carried out the noble mission of mercy.
Glorious patriots served in all branches of the military - in aviation and the marine corps, on warships of the Black Sea Fleet, the Northern Fleet, the Caspian and Dnieper flotillas, in floating naval hospitals and ambulance trains. Together with horsemen, they went on deep raids behind enemy lines and were in partisan detachments. With the infantry we reached Berlin. And everywhere doctors provided specialized assistance to those injured in battle.
It is estimated that female medical instructors of rifle companies, medical battalions, and artillery batteries helped seventy percent of wounded soldiers return to duty.
For special courage and heroism, 15 female doctors were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
A sculptural monument in Kaluga reminds of the feat of women military doctors. In the park on Kirov Street, a front-line nurse in a raincoat, with a sanitary bag over her shoulder, stands at full height on a high pedestal. During the war, the city of Kaluga was the center of numerous hospitals that treated and returned tens of thousands of soldiers and commanders to duty. That is why they built a monument in a holy place, which always has flowers.
History has never known such massive participation of women in the armed struggle for the Motherland as Soviet women showed during the Great Patriotic War. Having achieved enrollment in the ranks of the soldiers of the Red Army, women and girls mastered almost all military specialties and, together with their husbands, fathers and brothers, carried out military service in all branches of the Soviet Armed Forces.
Unidentified Soviet private girls from an anti-tank artillery unit.
5. A girl and a boy from the Leningrad People’s Militia on the banks of the Neva. 1941
6. Orderly Klavdiya Olomskaya provides assistance to the crew of a damaged T-34 tank. Belgorod region. 9-10.07.1943
7. Residents of Leningrad are digging an anti-tank ditch. July 1941
8. Women transport stones on the Moskovskoe highway in besieged Leningrad. November 1941
9. Female doctors bandage the wounded in the carriage of the Soviet military hospital train No. 72 during the Zhitomir-Chelyabinsk flight. June 1944
10. Applying plaster bandages to a wounded person in the carriage of the military-Soviet ambulance train No. 72 during the flight Zhitomir - Chelyabinsk. June 1944
11. Subcutaneous infusion to a wounded person in the carriage of the Soviet military hospital train No. 234 at Nezhin station. February 1944
12. Dressing a wounded person in the carriage of the Soviet military hospital train No. 318 during the Nezhin-Kirov flight. January 1944
13. Female doctors of the Soviet military ambulance train No. 204 give an intravenous infusion to a wounded man during the Sapogovo-Guriev flight. December 1943
14. Female doctors bandage a wounded man in the carriage of the Soviet military hospital train No. 111 during the Zhitomir-Chelyabinsk flight. December 1943
15. The wounded are waiting for a dressing in the carriage of the Soviet military hospital train No. 72 during the Smorodino-Yerevan flight. December 1943
16. Group portrait of military personnel of the 329th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment in the city of Komarno, Czechoslovakia. 1945
17. Group portrait of servicemen of the 585th medical battalion of the 75th Guards Rifle Division. 1944
18. Yugoslav partisans on the street of the town of Požega (Požega, territory of modern Croatia). 09/17/1944
19. Group photo of female fighters of the 1st battalion of the 17th shock brigade of the 28th shock division of the NOLA on the street of the liberated town of Djurdjevac (the territory of modern Croatia). January 1944
20. A medical instructor bandages the head of a wounded Red Army soldier on a village street.
21. Lepa Radić before execution. Hanged by the Germans in the city of Bosanska Krupa, 17-year-old Yugoslav partisan Lepa Radić (12/19/1925—February 1943).
22. Girls air defense fighters are on combat duty on the roof of house No. 4 on Khalturina Street (currently Millionnaya Street) in Leningrad. 05/01/1942
23. Girls - fighters of the 1st Krainsky Proletarian Shock Brigade of the NOAU. Arandjelovac, Yugoslavia. September 1944
24. A female soldier among a group of wounded captured Red Army soldiers on the outskirts of the village. 1941
25. A lieutenant of the 26th Infantry Division of the US Army communicates with Soviet female medical officers. Czechoslovakia. 1945
26. Attack pilot of the 805th assault aviation regiment, Lieutenant Anna Aleksandrovna Egorova (09/23/1918 - 10/29/2009).
27. Captured Soviet female soldiers near a German Krupp Protze tractor somewhere in Ukraine. 08/19/1941
28. Two captured Soviet girls at the assembly point. 1941
29. Two elderly residents of Kharkov at the entrance to the basement of a destroyed house. February-March 1943
30. A captured Soviet soldier sits at a desk on the street of an occupied village. 1941
31. A Soviet soldier shakes hands with an American soldier during a meeting in Germany. 1945
32. Air barrage balloon on Stalin Avenue in Murmansk. 1943
33. Women from the Murmansk militia unit during military training. July 1943
34. Soviet refugees on the outskirts of a village in the vicinity of Kharkov. February-March 1943
35. Signalman-observer of the anti-aircraft battery Maria Travkina. Rybachy Peninsula, Murmansk region. 1943
36. One of the best snipers of the Leningrad Front N.P. Petrova with her students. June 1943
37. Formation of personnel of the 125th Guards Bomber Regiment on the occasion of the presentation of the Guards banner. Leonidovo airfield, Smolensk region. October 1943
38. Guard captain, deputy squadron commander of the 125th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment of the 4th Guards Bomber Aviation Division Maria Dolina at the Pe-2 aircraft. 1944
39. Captured Soviet women soldiers in Nevel. Pskov region. 07/26/1941
40. German soldiers lead arrested Soviet female partisans out of the forest.
41. A girl soldier from the Soviet troops that liberated Czechoslovakia in the cab of a truck. Prague. May 1945
42. Medical instructor of the 369th separate marine battalion of the Danube Military Flotilla, chief petty officer Ekaterina Illarionovna Mikhailova (Demina) (b. 1925). In the Red Army since June 1941 (added two years to her 15 years).
43. Radio operator of the air defense unit K.K. Barysheva (Baranova). Vilnius, Lithuania. 1945
44. A private who was treated for injury in an Arkhangelsk hospital.
45. Soviet female anti-aircraft gunners. Vilnius, Lithuania. 1945
46. Soviet girls rangefinders from the air defense forces. Vilnius, Lithuania. 1945
47. Sniper of the 184th Infantry Division, holder of the Order of Glory II and III degrees, senior sergeant Roza Georgievna Shanina. 1944
48. Commander of the 23rd Guards Rifle Division, Major General P.M. Shafarenko in the Reichstag with colleagues. May 1945
49. Operating nurses of the 250th medical battalion of the 88th rifle division. 1941
50. Driver of the 171st separate anti-aircraft artillery battalion, Private S.I. Telegina (Kireeva). 1945
51. Sniper of the 3rd Belorussian Front, holder of the Order of Glory, III degree, senior sergeant Roza Georgievna Shanina in the village of Merzlyaki. Vitebsk region, Belarus. 1944
52. The crew of the minesweeper boat T-611 of the Volga military flotilla. From left to right: Red Navy men Agniya Shabalina (motor operator), Vera Chapova (machine gunner), Petty Officer 2nd Article Tatyana Kupriyanova (ship commander), Red Navy men Vera Ukhlova (sailor) and Anna Tarasova miner). June-August 1943
53. Sniper of the 3rd Belorussian Front, holder of the Order of Glory II and III degrees, senior sergeant Roza Georgievna Shanina in the village of Stolyarishki, Lithuania. 1944
54. Soviet sniper corporal Rosa Shanina at the Krynki state farm. Vitebsk region, Belarusian SSR. June 1944
55. Former nurse and translator of the Polarnik partisan detachment, sergeant of the medical service Anna Vasilievna Vasilyeva (Mokraya). 1945
56. Sniper of the 3rd Belorussian Front, holder of the Order of Glory II and III degrees, senior sergeant Roza Georgievna Shanina, at the celebration of the New Year 1945 in the editorial office of the newspaper “Let's Destroy the Enemy!”
57. Soviet sniper, future Hero of the Soviet Union, senior sergeant Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko (07/01/1916-10/27/1974). 1942
58. Soldiers of the Polarnik partisan detachment at a rest stop during a campaign behind enemy lines. From left to right: nurse, intelligence officer Maria Mikhailovna Shilkova, nurse, communications courier Klavdiya Stepanovna Krasnolobova (Listova), fighter, political instructor Klavdiya Danilovna Vtyurina (Golitskaya). 1943
59. Soldiers of the Polarnik partisan detachment: nurse, demolition worker Zoya Ilyinichna Derevnina (Klimova), nurse Maria Stepanovna Volova, nurse Alexandra Ivanovna Ropotova (Nevzorova).
60. Soldiers of the 2nd platoon of the Polarnik partisan detachment before going on a mission. Guerrilla base Shumi-gorodok. Karelo-Finnish SSR. 1943
61. Soldiers of the Polarnik partisan detachment before going on a mission. Guerrilla base Shumi-gorodok. Karelo-Finnish SSR. 1943
62. Female pilots of the 586th Air Defense Fighter Regiment discuss a past combat mission near a Yak-1 aircraft. Airfield "Anisovka", Saratov region. September 1942
63. Pilot of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, junior lieutenant R.V. Yushina. 1945
64. Soviet cameraman Maria Ivanovna Sukhova (1905-1944) in a partisan detachment.
65. Pilot of the 175th Guards Attack Aviation Regiment, Lieutenant Maria Tolstova, in the cockpit of an Il-2 attack aircraft. 1945
66. Women dig anti-tank ditches near Moscow in the fall of 1941.
67. Soviet traffic policewoman against the backdrop of a burning building on a Berlin street. May 1945
68. Deputy commander of the 125th (female) Guards Borisov Bomber Regiment named after Hero of the Soviet Union Marina Raskova, Major Elena Dmitrievna Timofeeva.
69. Fighter pilot of the 586th Air Defense Fighter Regiment, Lieutenant Raisa Nefedovna Surnachevskaya. 1943
70. Sniper of the 3rd Belorussian Front, senior sergeant Roza Shanina. 1944
71. Soldiers of the Polarnik partisan detachment on their first military campaign. July 1943
72. Marines of the Pacific Fleet on the way to Port Arthur. In the foreground is a participant in the defense of Sevastopol, Pacific Fleet paratrooper Anna Yurchenko. August 1945
73. Soviet partisan girl. 1942
74. Officers of the 246th Rifle Division, including women, on the street of a Soviet village. 1942
75. A private girl from the Soviet troops who liberated Czechoslovakia smiles from the cab of a truck. 1945
76. Three captured Soviet women soldiers.
77. Pilot of the 73rd Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment, junior lieutenant Lydia Litvyak (1921-1943) after a combat flight on the wing of her Yak-1B fighter.
78. Scout Valentina Oleshko (left) with a friend before being deployed behind German lines in the Gatchina area. 1942
79. Column of captured Red Army soldiers in the vicinity of Kremenchug, Ukraine. September 1941.
80. Gunsmiths load cassettes of an Il-2 attack aircraft with PTAB anti-tank bombs.
81. Female medical instructors of the 6th Guards Army. 03/08/1944
82. Red Army soldiers of the Leningrad Front on the march. 1944
83. Signal operator Lidiya Nikolaevna Blokova. Central front. 08/08/1943
84. Military doctor 3rd rank (captain of the medical service) Elena Ivanovna Grebeneva (1909-1974), resident doctor of the surgical dressing platoon of the 316th medical battalion of the 276th rifle division. 02/14/1942
85. Maria Dementyevna Kucheryavaya, born in 1918, lieutenant of the medical service. Sevlievo, Bulgaria. September 1944
I was born on May 20, 1926 in the village of Pokrovka, Volokonovsky district, Kursk region, in the family of an employee. His father worked as a secretary of the village council, an accountant at the Tavrichesky state farm, his mother was an illiterate peasant woman from a poor family, half-orphan, and was a housewife. There were 5 children in the family, I was the eldest. Before the war, our family often went hungry. The years 1931 and 1936 were especially difficult. During these years, the villagers ate the grass growing around them; quinoa, cattail, caraway roots, potato tops, sorrel, beet tops, katran, syrgibuz, etc. During these years there were terrible queues for bread, calico, matches, soap, and salt. Only in 1940 did life become easier, more satisfying, and more fun.
In 1939, the state farm was destroyed and deliberately declared harmful. My father began working at the Yutanovskaya State Mill as an accountant. The family left Pokrovka for Yutanovka. In 1941, I graduated from the 7th grade of Yutanovskaya Secondary School. The parents moved to their native village, to their own house. This is where the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 found us. I remember this sign well. On the evening of June 15 (or 16), together with other teenagers from our street, we went to meet the cattle returning from the pasture. The greeters gathered at the well. Suddenly one of the women, looking at the setting sun, shouted: “Look, what is that in the sky?” The solar disk has not yet completely sunk below the horizon. Three huge pillars of fire blazed beyond the horizon. “What will happen?” Old woman Kozhina Akulina Vasilyevna, the midwife, sat down and said: “Get ready, little ladies, for something terrible. There will be war! How did this old woman know that war would break out very soon.
There they announced to everyone that our Motherland had been attacked by Nazi Germany. And at night, carts arrived with men who had received summonses to be drafted into the war to the regional center, to the military registration and enlistment office. Day and night in the village one could hear the howling and crying of women and old men as they saw off their breadwinners to the front. Within 2 weeks, all young men were sent to the front.
My father received the summons on July 4, 1941, and on July 5, Sunday, we said goodbye to my father, and he went to the front. Anxious days dragged on; news from fathers, brothers, friends, and suitors was awaited in every house.
My village suffered a particularly difficult lot due to its geographical location. A highway of strategic importance connecting Kharkov with Voronezh passes through it, dividing Sloboda and Novoselovka into two parts.
From Zarechnaya Street, where my family lived in house No. 5, there was an uphill climb, quite steep. And already in the fall of 1941, this highway was mercilessly bombed by fascist vultures that broke through the front line.
The road was packed to capacity with those moving east, towards the Don. There were army units that had emerged from the chaos of the war: ragged, dirty Red Army soldiers, there was equipment, mostly semi-trucks - cars for ammunition, there were refugees (then they were called evacuees), they were driving herds of cows, flocks of sheep, herds of horses from the western regions of our Motherland. This flood destroyed the harvest. Our houses never had locks. Military units were located at the behest of their commanders. The door to the house opened, and the commander asked: “Are there any fighters?” If the answer is “No!” or “Already left,” then 20 or more people would come in and collapse on the floor from fatigue and immediately fall asleep. In the evening, in each hut the housewives cooked potatoes, beets, and soup in 1.5-2 bucket cast iron pots. They woke up the sleeping soldiers and offered them dinner, but sometimes not everyone had the strength to get up to eat. And when the autumn rains began, the wet, dirty windings were removed from the tired sleeping soldiers, dried by the stove, then they kneaded the dirt and shook it out. Overcoats were drying at the stove. The residents of our village helped in any way they could: simple food, treatment, soared the fighters’ legs, etc.
At the end of July 1941, we were sent to build a defensive line, outside the village of Borisovka, Volche-Alexandrovsky village council. August was warm, there were hardly any people in the trenches. The comfreys spent the night in the barns of three villages, taking with them from home crackers and raw potatoes, 1 cup of millet and 1 cup of beans for 10 days. We were not fed in the trenches, we were sent for 10 days, then we were sent home to wash ourselves, mend our clothes and shoes, help our family, and after 3 days come back again to do heavy earthworks.
One day, 25 Pokrovites were sent home. When we walked through the streets of the regional center and reached the outskirts, we saw a huge flame engulfing the road along which we should go to our village. Fear and horror took possession of us. We were approaching, and the flames rushed and swirled with a crash and howl. Wheat was burning on one side and barley on the other side of the road. The length of the fields is up to 4 kilometers. When the grain burns, it makes a crackling noise, like the sound of a machine gun firing. Smoke, fumes. The older women led us around the Assikova gully. At home they asked us what was burning in Volokanovka, we said that standing wheat and barley were burning - in a word, unharvested bread was burning. But there was no one to clean up, tractor drivers and combine operators went to war, draft animals and equipment were driven east to the Don, the only lorry and horses were taken into the army. Who set the fire? For what purpose? For what? - still no one knows. But due to fires in the fields, the region was left without bread, without grain for sowing.
1942, 1943, 1944 were very difficult for the villagers.
No bread, no salt, no matches, no soap, no kerosene were brought to the village. There was no radio in the village; they learned about the state of hostilities from the lips of refugees, fighters and just all sorts of talkers. In the fall, it was impossible to dig trenches, since the black soil (up to 1-1.5 m) became wet and dragged along with the feet. We were sent to clean up and level the highway. The standards were also heavy: for 1 person 12 meters in length, with a width of 10-12 meters. The war was approaching our village, fighting was going on for Kharkov. In winter, the flow of refugees stopped, and army units went every day, some to the front, others to the rear for rest... In winter, as in other seasons, enemy planes broke through and bombed cars, tanks, and army units moving along the road. There was not a day when the cities of our region were not bombed - Kursk, Belgorod, Korocha, Stary Oskol, Novy Oskol, Valuiki, Rastornaya, and the enemies did not bomb airfields. The large airfield was located 3-3.5 kilometers from our village. The pilots lived in village houses and ate in the canteen located in the building of the seven-year school. In my family there lived a pilot, officer Nikolai Ivanovich Leonov, a native of Kursk. We accompanied him to his assignments, said goodbye, and his mother blessed him, wanting to return alive. At this time, Nikolai Ivanovich was searching for his family, who had been lost during the evacuation. Subsequently, there was correspondence with my family from which I learned that Nikolai Ivanovich received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, found a wife and eldest daughter, but never found his little daughter. When pilot Nikolai Cherkasov did not return from his mission, the entire village mourned his death.
Until the spring and autumn of 1944, the fields of our village were not sown, there were no seeds, there was no living tax, no equipment, and the old women and young children were not able to cultivate and sow the fields. In addition, the saturation of the fields with mines was a hindrance. The fields are overgrown with impenetrable weeds. The population was doomed to a half-starved existence; they mainly ate beets. It was prepared in the fall of 1941 in deep pits. Beetroot was fed to both Red Army soldiers and prisoners in the Pokrovsky concentration camp. In the concentration camp, on the outskirts of the village, there were up to 2 thousand captured Soviet soldiers. Late August - early September 1941 we were digging trenches and building dugouts along the railway from Volokonovka to Staroivanka station.
Those who were able to work went to dig trenches; the population who were unable to work remained in the village.
After 10 days, the comfrey soldiers were allowed to go home for three days. At the beginning of September 1941, I came home, like all my friends from the trenches. On the second day, I went out into the yard, an old neighbor called out to me: “Tanya, you came, but your friends Nyura and Zina left and evacuated.” What I was wearing, barefoot, in just a dress, ran up the mountain, onto the highway, to catch up with my friends, not even knowing when they left.
Refugees and soldiers walked in groups. I rushed from one group to another, cried and called my friends. I was stopped by an elderly fighter who reminded me of my father. He asked me where, why, to whom I was running, and whether I had documents. And then he said menacingly: “March home to your mother. If you deceive me, I will find you and shoot you.” I got scared and ran back along the side of the road. So much time has passed, and even now I wonder where the strength came from then. Running to the gardens of our street, I went to my friends’ mother to make sure that they had left. My friends left - this was the bitter truth for me. After crying, I decided that I had to return home and ran around the gardens. Grandmother Aksinya met me and began to shame me for not taking care of the harvest, trampling it, and called me to talk to her. I tell her about my misadventures. I’m crying... Suddenly we hear the sound of flying fascist planes. And grandma saw that the planes were doing some maneuvers, and… bottles were flying out of them! (So, the grandmother said, screaming). Grabbing my hand, she headed into the brick basement of the neighbor's house. But as soon as we stepped out of the entryway of my grandmother’s house, many explosions were heard. We ran, grandma in front, me behind, and we had just reached the middle of the neighbor’s garden when grandma fell to the ground and blood appeared on her stomach. I realized that my grandmother was wounded, and screaming, I ran through three estates to my house, hoping to find and take rags to bandage the wounded woman. Having run to the house, I saw that the roof of the house was torn off, all the window frames were broken, glass fragments were everywhere, out of 3 doors there was only one warped door on a single hinge. There's not a soul in the house. In horror I ran to the cellar, and there was a trench under the cherry tree. My mother, my sisters and brother were in the trench.
When the bombs stopped exploding and the all-clear siren sounded, we all left the trench, I asked my mother to give me rags to bandage Grandma Ksyusha. My sisters and I ran to where my grandmother was lying. She was surrounded by people. Some soldier took off his undershirt and covered the grandmother’s body. She was buried without a coffin at the edge of her potato garden. The houses of our village remained without glass and without doors until 1945. When the war was coming to an end, they began to gradually give glass and nails according to lists. In warm weather, I continued to dig trenches, like all the adult fellow villagers, to clean the highway in the slush.
In 1942, we were digging a deep anti-tank ditch between our village of Pokrovka and the airfield. Something bad happened to me there. I was sent upstairs to rake the earth, the earth began to creep under my feet, and I could not resist and fell from a 2-meter height to the bottom of the trench, received a concussion, a shift in the spinal discs and an injury to my right kidney. They treated me with home remedies, a month later I worked on the same structure again, but we didn’t have time to finish it. Our troops retreated fighting. There were strong battles for the airfield, for my Pokrovka.
On July 1, 1942, Nazi soldiers entered Pokrovka. During the battles and the deployment of fascist units in the meadow, along the banks of the Tikhaya Sosna river and in our vegetable gardens, we were in the cellars, occasionally looking out to see what was going on there on the street.
To the music of harmonicas, the sleek fascists checked our houses, and then, taking off their military uniforms and armed with sticks, they began to chase chickens, kill them and roast them on spits. Soon there was not a single chicken left in the village. Another fascist military unit arrived and ate the ducks and geese. For fun, the Nazis scattered bird feathers into the wind. Within a week, the village of Pokrovka was covered with a blanket of down and feathers. The village looked white, as if after snow had fallen. Then the Nazis ate the pigs, sheep, calves, and did not touch (or maybe did not have time to) the old cows. We had a goat, they didn’t take the goats, but they mocked them. The Nazis began to build a bypass road around the Dedovskaya Shapka mountain with the help of Soviet soldiers imprisoned in a concentration camp.
The earth - a thick layer of black soil - was loaded onto cars and taken away; they said that the earth was loaded onto platforms and sent to Germany. Many young girls were sent to Germany for hard labor; they were shot and flogged for resistance.
Every Saturday at 10 o'clock our rural communists had to appear at the commandant's office of our village. Among them was Kupriyan Kupriyanovich Dudoladov, former chairman of the village council. A man two meters tall, overgrown with a beard, sick, leaning on a stick, he walked to the commandant’s office. Women always asked: “Well, Dudolad, have you already gone home from the commandant’s office?” It was as if the time was being checked by it. One of the Saturdays became Kupriyan Kupriyanovich’s last; he did not return from the commandant’s office. What the Nazis did to him is unknown to this day. One autumn day in 1942, a woman covered with a checkered scarf came to the village. She was assigned to spend the night, and at night the Nazis took her and shot her outside the village. In 1948, her grave was found, and a visiting Soviet officer, the husband of the executed woman, took away her remains.
In mid-August 1942, we were sitting on a hillock in the cellar, the Nazis were in tents in our garden, near the house. None of us noticed how brother Sasha went to the fascist tents. Soon we saw a fascist kicking a seven-year-old child... Mom and I rushed at the fascist. The fascist knocked me down with a punch and I fell. Mom took Sasha and me crying to the cellar. One day a man in a fascist uniform approached us at the cellar. We saw that he was repairing fascist cars and, turning to his mother, said: “Mom, there will be an explosion late at night. No one should leave the cellars at night, no matter how the military rages, let them yell, shoot, close yourself tightly and sit. Tell it quietly to all the neighbors, all along the street.” At night there was an explosion. The Nazis were shooting, running, looking for the organizers of the explosion, shouting: “Partisan, partisan.” We were silent. In the morning we saw that the Nazis had dismantled the camp and left; the bridge across the river had been destroyed. Grandfather Fyodor Trofimovich Mazokhin, who saw this moment (we called him Grandfather Mazai in childhood), said that when a passenger car drove onto the bridge, followed by a bus filled with military personnel, then a passenger car, and suddenly a terrible explosion, and all this equipment collapsed into the river . Many fascists died, but by morning everything was pulled out and taken away. The Nazis hid their losses from us, the Soviet people. By the end of the day, a military unit arrived in the village, and they cut down all the trees, all the bushes, as if they had shaved the village, there were bare huts and sheds. No one in the village knows who this person is who warned us, the residents of Pokrovka, about the explosion and saved the lives of many.
When your land is ruled by invaders, you are not free to manage your time, you have no rights, your life can end at any moment. On a rainy night in late autumn, when the residents had already entered their houses, there was a concentration camp in the village, its guards, the commandant’s office, the commandant, the burgomaster, and the Nazis burst into our house, knocking down the door. They, shining flashlights on our house, pulled us all off the stove and made us face the wall. Mom stood first, then my sisters, then my crying brother, and last I stood. The Nazis opened the chest and dragged everything that was newer. Among the valuables they took was a bicycle, my father's suit, chrome boots, a sheepskin coat, new galoshes, etc. When they left, we stood there for a long time, afraid that they would return and shoot us. Many people were robbed that night. Mom would get up in the dark, go outside and watch from which chimney smoke would appear, so that she could send one of us, the children, me or my sisters, to ask for 3-4 burning coals to light the stove. They ate mainly beets. Boiled beets were carried in buckets to the construction of a new road to feed prisoners of war. These were great sufferers: ragged, beaten, rattling shackles and chains on their feet, swollen from hunger, they walked back and forth with a slow, staggering gait. On the sides of the column were fascist guards with dogs. Many died right during construction. And how many children and teenagers were blown up by mines, were injured during bombings, firefights, and air battles.
The end of January 1943 was still rich in events in the life of the village, such as the appearance of a huge number of leaflets, both Soviet and Nazi German. Already frostbitten, in rags, fascist soldiers walked back from the Volga, and fascist planes dropped leaflets on the villages, where they talked about victories over Soviet troops on the Don and Volga. From Soviet leaflets we learned that battles were coming for the village, that residents of Slobodskaya and Zarechnaya streets had to leave the village. Having taken all their belongings so that they could shelter from the frost, the residents of the street left and spent three days outside the village in pits and in an anti-tank ditch tormented, waiting for the end of the fighting for Pokrovka. The village was bombed by Soviet planes, as the Nazis settled in our houses. The Nazis burned everything that could be burned for heating - cabinets, chairs, wooden beds, tables, doors. During the liberation of the village, Golovinovskaya Street, houses, and barns were burned.
On February 2, 1943, we returned home, cold, hungry, many of us had been sick for a long time. In the meadow separating our street from Slobodskaya, lay the black corpses of killed fascists. Only at the beginning of March, when the sun began to warm up and the corpses thawed, was the burial of the Nazi soldiers who died during the liberation of the village organized in a common grave. February-March 1943, we, residents of the village of Pokrovka, kept the highway in constant good condition, along which vehicles with shells and Soviet soldiers also went to the front, and it was not far away, the whole country was intensely preparing for the summer general battle on the resulting Kursk Bulge. May-July and the beginning of August 1943, together with my fellow villagers, I was again in the trenches near the village of Zalomnoye, which is located along the Moscow-Donbass railway.
On my next visit to the village, I learned about misfortune in our family. Brother Sasha went with the older boys to the torah. There stood a tank that had been knocked out and abandoned by the Nazis, and there were many shells near it. The kids placed a large projectile with its wings down, placed a smaller one on it, and hit it with the third one. The explosion lifted the boys up and threw them into the river. My brother’s friends were wounded, one had a broken leg, another was wounded in the arm, leg and part of his tongue was torn off, his brother’s big toe was torn off on his right foot, and there were countless scratches.
During the bombing or shelling, for some reason it seemed to me that they only wanted to kill me, and were aiming at me, and I always asked myself with tears and bitterness, what did I manage to do so bad?
War is scary! This is blood, the loss of family and friends, this is robbery, these are the tears of children and the elderly, violence, humiliation, depriving a person of all his natural rights and opportunities.
From the memoirs of Tatyana Semyonovna Bogatyreva
The truth about women in the war, which was not written about in the newspapers...
Memoirs of female veterans from Svetlana Alexievich’s book “War Has Not a Woman’s Face” - one of the most famous books about the Great Patriotic War, where the war was first shown through the eyes of a woman. The book has been translated into 20 languages and included in the school and university curriculum.
“Daughter, I put together a bundle for you. Go away... Go away... You still have two younger sisters growing up. Who will marry them? Everyone knows that you were at the front for four years, with men...”
“Once at night a whole company conducted reconnaissance in force in our regiment’s sector. By dawn she had moved away, and a groan was heard from the no-man's land. Left wounded. “Don’t go, they’ll kill you,” the soldiers wouldn’t let me in, “you see, it’s already dawn.” She didn’t listen and crawled. She found a wounded man and dragged him for eight hours, tying his arm with a belt. She dragged a living one. The commander found out and rashly announced five days of arrest for unauthorized absence. But the deputy regiment commander reacted differently: “Deserves a reward.” At the age of nineteen I had a medal “For Courage”. At nineteen she turned gray. At the age of nineteen, in the last battle, both lungs were shot, the second bullet passed between two vertebrae. My legs were paralyzed... And they considered me dead... At nineteen... My granddaughter is like this now. I look at her and don’t believe it. Child!
“And when he appeared the third time, in one moment - he would appear and then disappear - I decided to shoot. I made up my mind, and suddenly such a thought flashed: this is a man, even though he is an enemy, but a man, and my hands somehow began to tremble, trembling and chills began to spread throughout my body. Some kind of fear... Sometimes in my dreams this feeling comes back to me... After the plywood targets, it was difficult to shoot at a living person. I see him through the optical sight, I see him well. It’s as if he’s close... And something inside me resists... Something won’t let me, I can’t make up my mind. But I pulled myself together, pulled the trigger... We didn’t succeed right away. It's not a woman's business to hate and kill. Not ours... We had to convince ourselves. Persuade…"
“And the girls were eager to go to the front voluntarily, but a coward himself would not go to war. These were brave, extraordinary girls. There are statistics: losses among frontline medics ranked second after losses in rifle battalions. In the infantry. What does it mean, for example, to pull a wounded man out of the battlefield? We went on the attack, and let us be mowed down with a machine gun. And the battalion was gone. Everyone was lying down. They were not all killed, many were wounded. The Germans are hitting and they don’t stop firing. Quite unexpectedly for everyone, first one girl jumps out of the trench, then a second, a third... They began to bandage and drag away the wounded, even the Germans were speechless with amazement for a while. By ten o'clock in the evening, all the girls were seriously wounded, and each saved a maximum of two or three people. They were awarded sparingly; at the beginning of the war, awards were not scattered. The wounded man had to be pulled out along with his personal weapon. The first question in the medical battalion: where are the weapons? At the beginning of the war there was not enough of him. A rifle, a machine gun, a machine gun - these also had to be carried. In forty-one, order number two hundred and eighty-one was issued on the presentation of awards for saving the lives of soldiers: for fifteen seriously wounded people carried out from the battlefield along with personal weapons - the medal “For Military Merit”, for saving twenty-five people - the Order of the Red Star, for saving forty - the Order of the Red Banner, for saving eighty - the Order of Lenin. And I described to you what it meant to save at least one person in battle... From under bullets..."
“What was going on in our souls, the kind of people we were then will probably never exist again. Never! So naive and so sincere. With such faith! When our regiment commander received the banner and gave the command: “Regiment, under the banner! On your knees!”, we all felt happy. We stand and cry, everyone has tears in their eyes. You won’t believe it now, because of this shock my whole body tensed up, my illness, and I got “night blindness”, it happened from malnutrition, from nervous fatigue, and so, my night blindness went away. You see, the next day I was healthy, I recovered, through such a shock to my whole soul...”
“I was thrown against a brick wall by a hurricane wave. I lost consciousness... When I came to my senses, it was already evening. She raised her head, tried to squeeze her fingers - they seemed to be moving, barely opened her left eye and went to the department, covered in blood. In the corridor I meet our older sister, she didn’t recognize me and asked: “Who are you? Where?" She came closer, gasped and said: “Where have you been for so long, Ksenya? The wounded are hungry, but you are not there.” They quickly bandaged my head and my left arm above the elbow, and I went to get dinner. It was getting dark before my eyes and sweat was pouring out. I started handing out dinner and fell. They brought me back to consciousness, and all I could hear was: “Hurry! Hurry up!” And again - “Hurry! Hurry up!” A few days later they took more blood from me for the seriously wounded.”
“We were young and went to the front. Girls. I even grew up during the war. Mom tried it on at home... I have grown ten centimeters..."
“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..."
“I was mobilized, I was a doctor. I left with a sense of duty. And my dad was happy that his daughter was at the front. Defends the Motherland. Dad went to the military registration and enlistment office early in the morning. He went to receive my certificate and went early in the morning specifically so that everyone in the village would see that his daughter was at the front...”
“I remember they let me go. Before going to my aunt, I went to the store. Before the war, I loved candy terribly. I say:
- Give me some sweets.
The saleswoman looks at me like I'm crazy. I didn’t understand: what are cards, what is a blockade? All the people in line turned to me, and I had a rifle bigger than me. When they were given to us, I looked and thought: “When will I grow up to this rifle?” And everyone suddenly began to ask, the whole line:
- Give her some sweets. Cut out the coupons from us.
And they gave it to me."
“And for the first time in my life, it happened... Ours... Feminine... I saw blood on myself, and I screamed:
- I was hurt...
During reconnaissance, we had a paramedic with us, an elderly man. He comes to me:
- Where did it hurt?
- I don’t know where... But blood...
He, like a father, told me everything... I went to reconnaissance after the war for about fifteen years. Every night. And the dreams are like this: either my machine gun failed, or we were surrounded. You wake up and your teeth are grinding. Do you remember where you are? There or here?”
“I went to the front as a materialist. An atheist. She left as a good Soviet schoolgirl, who was taught well. And there... There I began to pray... I always prayed before the battle, I read my prayers. The words are simple... My words... The meaning is one, that I return to mom and dad. I didn’t know real prayers, and I didn’t read the Bible. No one saw me pray. I am secretly. She secretly prayed. Carefully. Because... We were different then, different people lived then. You understand?"
“It was impossible to attack us with uniforms: they were always in the blood. My first wounded was Senior Lieutenant Belov, my last wounded was Sergei Petrovich Trofimov, sergeant of the mortar platoon. In 1970, he came to visit me, and I showed my daughters his wounded head, which still has a large scar on it. In total, I carried out four hundred and eighty-one wounded from under fire. One of the journalists calculated: a whole rifle battalion... They were carrying men two to three times heavier than us. And they are even more seriously wounded. You are dragging him and his weapon, and he is also wearing an overcoat and boots. You put eighty kilograms on yourself and drag it. You lose... You go after the next one, and again seventy-eighty kilograms... And so five or six times in one attack. And you yourself have forty-eight kilograms - ballet weight. Now I can’t believe it anymore..."
“I later became a squad commander. The entire squad is made up of young boys. We're on the boat all day. The boat is small, there are no latrines. The guys can go overboard if necessary, and that’s it. Well, what about me? A couple of times I got so bad that I jumped straight overboard and started swimming. They shout: “The foreman is overboard!” They'll pull you out. This is such an elementary little thing... But what kind of little thing is this? I then received treatment...
“I returned from the war gray-haired. Twenty-one years old, and I’m all white. I was seriously wounded, concussed, and I couldn’t hear well in one ear. My mother greeted me with the words: “I believed that you would come. I prayed for you day and night.” My brother died at the front. She cried: “It’s the same now - give birth to girls or boys.”
“But I’ll say something else... The worst thing for me in war is wearing men’s underpants. That was scary. And this somehow... I can’t express myself... Well, first of all, it’s very ugly... You’re at war, you’re going to die for your Motherland, and you’re wearing men’s underpants. Overall, you look funny. Ridiculous. Men's underpants were long then. Wide. Sewed from satin. Ten girls in our dugout, and all of them are wearing men's underpants. Oh my God! In winter and summer. Four years... We crossed the Soviet border... We finished off, as our commissar said during political classes, the beast in its own den. Near the first Polish village they changed our clothes, gave us new uniforms and... And! AND! AND! They brought women's panties and bras for the first time. For the first time throughout the war. Haaaa... Well, I see... We saw normal women's underwear... Why aren't you laughing? Are you crying... Well, why?
“At the age of eighteen, on the Kursk Bulge, I was awarded the medal “For Military Merit” and the Order of the Red Star, at the age of nineteen - the Order of the Patriotic War, second degree. When new additions arrived, the guys were all young, of course, they were surprised. They were also eighteen to nineteen years old, and they asked mockingly: “What did you get your medals for?” or “Have you been in battle?” They pester you with jokes: “Do bullets penetrate the armor of a tank?” I later bandaged one of these on the battlefield, under fire, and I remembered his last name - Shchegolevatykh. His leg was broken. I splint him, and he asks me for forgiveness: “Sister, I’m sorry that I offended you then...”
“We drove for many days... We left with the girls at some station with a bucket to get water. They looked around and gasped: one train after another was coming, and there were only girls there. They sing. They wave at us - some with scarves, some with caps. It became clear: there weren’t enough men, they were dead in the ground. Or in captivity. Now we, instead of them... Mom wrote me a prayer. I put it in the locket. Maybe it helped - I returned home. Before the fight I kissed the medallion...”
“She shielded her loved one from the mine fragment. The fragments fly - it's just a fraction of a second... How did she make it? She saved Lieutenant Petya Boychevsky, she loved him. And he stayed to live. Thirty years later, Petya Boychevsky came from Krasnodar and found me at our front-line meeting, and told me all this. We went with him to Borisov and found the clearing where Tonya died. He took the earth from her grave... He carried it and kissed it... There were five of us, Konakov girls... And I alone returned to my mother...”
“And here I am the gun commander. And that means I am in the one thousand three hundred and fifty-seventh anti-aircraft regiment. At first, there was bleeding from the nose and ears, complete stomach upset set in... My throat was dry to the point of vomiting... At night it was not so scary, but during the day it was very scary. It seems that the plane is flying straight at you, specifically at your gun. It's ramming at you! This is one moment... Now it will turn all, all of you into nothing. Everything is over!
“As long as he hears... Until the last moment you tell him that no, no, is it really possible to die. You kiss him, hug him: what are you, what are you? He’s already dead, his eyes are on the ceiling, and I’m still whispering something to him... I’m calming him down... The names have been erased, gone from memory, but the faces remain...”
“We captured a nurse... A day later, when we recaptured that village, dead horses, motorcycles, and armored personnel carriers were lying everywhere. They found her: her eyes were gouged out, her breasts were cut off... They impaled her... It was frosty, and she was white and white, and her hair was all gray. She was nineteen years old. In her backpack we found letters from home and a green rubber bird. A children's toy..."
“Near Sevsk, the Germans attacked us seven to eight times a day. And even that day I carried out the wounded with their weapons. I crawled up to the last one, and his arm was completely broken. Dangling in pieces... On the veins... Covered in blood... He urgently needs to cut off his hand to bandage it. No other way. And I have neither a knife nor scissors. The bag shifted and shifted on its side, and they fell out. What to do? And I chewed this pulp with my teeth. I chewed it up, bandaged it... I bandage it, and the wounded man: “Hurry, sister. I’ll fight again.” In a fever..."
“The whole war I was afraid that my legs would be crippled. I had beautiful legs. What to a man? He’s not so scared if he even loses his legs. Still a hero. Groom! If a woman gets hurt, then her fate will be decided. Women's destiny..."
“The men will build a fire at the bus stop, shake out the lice, and dry themselves. Where are we? Let's run for some shelter and undress there. I had a knitted sweater, so lice sat on every millimeter, in every loop. Look, you'll feel nauseous. There are head lice, body lice, pubic lice... I had them all...”
“We strived... We didn’t want people to say about us: “Oh, those women!” And we tried harder than men, we still had to prove that we were no worse than men. And for a long time there was an arrogant, condescending attitude towards us: “These women will fight...”
“Wounded three times and shell-shocked three times. During the war, everyone dreamed of what: some to return home, some to reach Berlin, but I only dreamed of one thing - to live to see my birthday, so that I would turn eighteen. For some reason, I was afraid to die earlier, not even live to see eighteen. I walked around in trousers and a cap, always in tatters, because you are always crawling on your knees, and even under the weight of a wounded person. I couldn’t believe that one day it would be possible to stand up and walk on the ground instead of crawling. It was a dream!”
“Let’s go... There are about two hundred girls, and behind us there are about two hundred men. It's hot. Hot Summer. March throw - thirty kilometers. The heat is wild... And after us there are red spots on the sand... Red footprints... Well, these things... Ours... How can you hide anything here? The soldiers follow behind and pretend that they don’t notice anything... They don’t look at their feet... Our trousers dried up, as if they were made of glass. They cut it. There were wounds there, and the smell of blood could be heard all the time. They didn’t give us anything... We kept watch: when the soldiers hung their shirts on the bushes. We’ll steal a couple of pieces... Later they guessed and laughed: “Sergeant major, give us other underwear. The girls took ours.” There wasn't enough cotton wool and bandages for the wounded... Not that... Women's underwear, perhaps, only appeared two years later. We wore men's shorts and T-shirts... Well, let's go... Wearing boots! My legs were also fried. Let's go... To the crossing, ferries are waiting there. We got to the crossing, and then they started bombing us. The bombing is terrible, men - who knows where to hide. Our name is... But we don’t hear the bombing, we have no time for bombing, we’d rather go to the river. To the water... Water! Water! And they sat there until they got wet... Under the fragments... Here it is... The shame was worse than death. And several girls died in the water...”
“We were happy when we took out a pot of water to wash our hair. If you walked for a long time, you looked for soft grass. They also tore her legs... Well, you know, they washed them off with grass... We had our own characteristics, girls... The army didn’t think about it... Our legs were green... It’s good if the foreman was an elderly person and he understood everything, did not take any excess linen from his duffel bag, and if he was young, he would definitely throw away the excess. And what a waste it is for girls who need to change clothes twice a day. We tore the sleeves off our undershirts, and there were only two of them. These are only four sleeves..."
“How did the Motherland greet us? I can’t do without sobbing... Forty years have passed, and my cheeks are still burning. The men were silent, and the women... They shouted to us: “We know what you were doing there! They were luring young p... our men. Front-line b... Military bitches..." They insulted us in every way... Rich Russian dictionary ...
A guy escorts me from the dance, I suddenly feel bad, my heart is pounding. I'll go and sit in a snowdrift. "What happened to you?" - “Nothing. I danced.” And these are my two wounds... This is war... And we must learn to be gentle. To be weak and fragile, and your feet were worn out in boots - size forty. It's unusual for someone to hug me. I'm used to being responsible for myself. I was waiting for kind words, but I didn’t understand them. They are like children's to me. At the front among the men there is a strong Russian mate. I'm used to it. A friend taught me, she worked in the library: “Read poetry. Read Yesenin.”
“My legs were gone... My legs were cut off... They saved me there, in the forest... The operation took place in the most primitive conditions. They put me on the table to operate, and there wasn’t even iodine; they sawed my legs, both legs, with a simple saw... They put me on the table, and there was no iodine. Six kilometers away, we went to another partisan detachment to get iodine, and I was lying on the table. Without anesthesia. Without... Instead of anesthesia - a bottle of moonshine. There was nothing but an ordinary saw... A carpenter's saw... We had a surgeon, he himself also had no legs, he spoke about me, other doctors said this: “I bow before her. I have operated on so many men, but I have never seen such men.” "He won't scream." I held on... I'm used to being strong in public..."
“My husband was a senior driver, and I was a driver. For four years we traveled in a heated vehicle, and our son came with us. During the entire war he didn’t even see a cat. When he caught a cat near Kiev, our train was terribly bombed, five planes flew in, and he hugged her: “Dear little kitty, how glad I am that I saw you. I don’t see anyone, well, sit with me. Let me kiss you.” A child... Everything for a child should be childish... He fell asleep with the words: “Mommy, we have a cat. We now have a real home.”
“Anya Kaburova is lying on the grass... Our signalman. She dies - a bullet hit her heart. At this time, a wedge of cranes flies over us. Everyone raised their heads to the sky, and she opened her eyes. She looked: “What a pity, girls.” Then she paused and smiled at us: “Girls, am I really going to die?” At this time, our postman, our Klava, is running, she shouts: “Don’t die! Don’t die! You have a letter from home...” Anya does not close her eyes, she is waiting... Our Klava sat down next to her and opened the envelope. A letter from my mother: “My dear, beloved daughter...” A doctor is standing next to me, he says: “This is a miracle. A miracle!! She lives contrary to all the laws of medicine...”
We finished reading the letter... And only then Anya closed her eyes...”
“I stayed with him one day, then the second, and I decided: “Go to headquarters and report. I’ll stay here with you.” He went to the authorities, but I couldn’t breathe: well, how can they say that she wouldn’t be able to walk for twenty-four hours? This is the front, that's clear. And suddenly I see the authorities coming into the dugout: major, colonel. Everyone shakes hands. Then, of course, we sat down in the dugout, drank, and everyone said their word that the wife found her husband in the trench, this is a real wife, there are documents. This is such a woman! Let me look at such a woman! They said such words, they all cried. I remember that evening all my life...”
“Near Stalingrad... I am dragging two wounded. If I drag one through, I leave it, then the other. And so I pull them one by one, because the wounded are very serious, they cannot be left, both, as it is easier to explain, have their legs cut off high, they are bleeding. Minutes are precious here, every minute. And suddenly, when I crawled further away from the battle, there was less smoke, suddenly I discovered that I was dragging one of our tankers and one German... I was horrified: our people were dying there, and I was saving a German. I was in a panic... There, in the smoke, I couldn’t figure it out... I see: a man is dying, a man is screaming... Ah-ah... They are both burnt, black. The same. And then I saw: someone else’s medallion, someone else’s watch, everything was someone else’s. This form is cursed. So what now? I pull our wounded man and think: “Should I go back for the German or not?” I understood that if I left him, he would soon die. From loss of blood... And I crawled after him. I continued to drag them both... This is Stalingrad... The most terrible battles. The very best... There cannot be one heart for hatred and another for love. A person has only one.”
“My friend... I won’t give her last name, in case she gets offended... Military paramedic... Wounded three times. The war ended, I entered medical school. She didn’t find any of her relatives; they all died. She was terribly poor, washing the entrances at night to feed herself. But she didn’t admit to anyone that she was a disabled war veteran and had benefits; she tore up all the documents. I ask: “Why did you break it?” She cries: “Who would marry me?” “Well,” I say, “I did the right thing.” She cries even louder: “I could use these pieces of paper now. I’m seriously ill.” Can you imagine? Crying."
“It was then that they began to honor us, thirty years later... They invited us to meetings... But at first we hid, we didn’t even wear awards. Men wore them, but women did not. Men are winners, heroes, suitors, they had a war, but they looked at us with completely different eyes. Completely different... Let me tell you, they took away our victory... They did not share the victory with us. And it was insulting... It’s unclear...”
“The first medal “For Courage”... The battle began. The fire is heavy. The soldiers lay down. The command: “Forward! For the Motherland!”, and they lie down. Again the command, again they lie down. I took off my hat so they could see: the girl stood up... And they all stood up, and we went into battle..."
During the Great Patriotic War, many Soviet citizens (not just soldiers) performed heroic deeds, saving other people's lives and bringing closer the USSR's victory over the German invaders. These people are rightfully considered heroes. In our article we will recall some of them.
Heroes men
The list of heroes of the Soviet Union who became famous during the Great Patriotic War is quite extensive, so Let's name the most famous:
- Nikolai Gastello (1907-1941): Hero of the Union posthumously, squadron commander. After being bombed by German heavy equipment, Gastello's plane was shot down. The pilot rammed a burning bomber into an enemy column;
- Victor Talalikhin (1918-1941): Hero of the USSR, deputy squadron commander, participated in the Battle of Moscow. One of the first Soviet pilots to ram the enemy in a night air battle;
- Alexander Matrosov (1924-1943): Hero of the Union posthumously, private, rifleman. In a battle near the village of Chernushki (Pskov region), he blocked the embrasure of a German firing point;
- Alexander Pokryshkin (1913-1985): three times Hero of the USSR, fighter pilot (recognized as an ace), improved combat techniques (about 60 victories), went through the entire war (about 650 sorties), air marshal (since 1972);
- Ivan Kozhedub (1920-1991): three times Hero, fighter pilot (ace), squadron commander, participant in the Battle of Kursk, carried out about 330 combat missions (64 victories). He became famous for his effective shooting technique (200-300 m before the enemy) and the absence of cases when the plane was shot down;
- Alexey Maresyev (1916-2001): Hero, deputy squadron commander, fighter pilot. He is famous for the fact that after the amputation of both legs, using prosthetics, he was able to return to combat flights.
Rice. 1. Nikolai Gastello.
In 2010, an extensive Russian electronic database “Feat of the People” was created, containing reliable information from official documents about war participants, their exploits and awards.
Women's heroes
It is especially worth highlighting the women heroes of the Great Patriotic War.
Some of them:
- Valentina Grizodubova (1909-1993): the first female pilot - Hero of the Soviet Union, instructor pilot (5 world aviation records), commander of an air regiment, made about 200 combat missions (132 of them at night);
- Lyudmila Pavlichenko (1916-1974): Hero of the Union, world-famous sniper, instructor at a sniper school, participated in the defense of Odessa and Sevastopol. Destroyed about 309 enemies, of which 36 were snipers;
- Lydia Litvyak (1921-1943): Posthumous hero, fighter pilot (ace), squadron flight commander, participated in the Battle of Stalingrad, battles in Donbass (168 sorties, 12 victories in air combat);
- Ekaterina Budanova (1916-1943): Hero of the Russian Federation posthumously (she was listed as missing in the USSR), fighter pilot (ace), repeatedly fought against superior enemy forces, including launching a frontal attack (11 victories);
- Ekaterina Zelenko (1916-1941): Hero of the Union posthumously, deputy squadron commander. The only Soviet female pilot who took part in the Soviet-Finnish war. The only woman in the world to ram an enemy plane (in Belarus);
- Evdokia Bershanskaya (1913-1982): the only woman awarded the Order of Suvorov. Pilot, commander of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment (1941-1945). The regiment was exclusively female. For his skill in performing combat missions, he received the nickname “night witches.” He particularly distinguished himself in the liberation of the Taman Peninsula, Feodosia, and Belarus.
Rice. 2. Pilots of the 46th Guards Aviation Regiment.
On 05/09/2012, the modern movement “Immortal Regiment” was born in Tomsk, designed to honor the memory of the heroes of the Second World War. Through the streets of the city, residents carried about two thousand portraits of their relatives who participated in the war. The movement became widespread. Every year the number of participating cities increases, even covering other countries. In 2015, the “Immortal Regiment” event received official permission and took place in Moscow immediately after the Victory Parade.
