Women in the Russian and Soviet military

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Women in the Russian and Soviet military, as in other nations, have played an important role in their countries military history, in particular during the ‘Great Patriotic War’. Despite performing various duties in the armies throughout Russian history, it was in the 20th century that women began to be given a more prominent role. Women of Russia and the Soviet Union played a significant role in world wars, especially during World War 2; arguably a greater role than in other combatant nations, although attitudes towards their contribution was occasionally paternalistic and reluctant.

1 World War I
2 World War II
3 Post 1945
4 References

[edit] World War I

Women served in the Russian armed forces in small numbers in the early stages of the war, but their numbers increased after heavy Russian losses such as at the Battle of Tannenburg and Masurian Lakes and a need for increased manpower. One such recruit was Maria Bochkareva who was serving with the 25th Reserve Battalion of the Russian Army. After the abdication of Nicholas II of Russia in March 1917, she convinced interim prime minister Alexander Kerensky to let her form a women's battalion. The Women's Battalion of Death recruited women between the ages of 13 and 25 and appealed for support in a series of public meetings, enlisting approximately 2,000 soldiers. The Battalion fought during the June Offensive against German forces in 1917. Three months of fighting dwindled their numbers to around two-hundred and fifty.

The Women's Battalion was disbanded after a failed political revolution known as the Kornilov Affair. Its leader, General Lavr Kornilov, had been strongly supported by Bachkarova, and the Women's Battalion were identified as potential sympathizers. The majority of the battalion's members were reformed as the First Petrograd Women's Battalion. This group was at the Winter Palace on the night of the Bolshevik Revolution, along with an untrained cadet detachment and a bicycle regiment. They mounted a stiff resistance but ultimately fell, although there were only 5 deaths in the storming of the Winter Palace. The triumphant Bolsheviks officially disbanded the group.

Several women pilots are known from the First World War. Princess Eugenie M. Shakovskaya was assigned duty as an artillery and reconnaissance pilot, having volunteered for the Imperial Russian Air Service in 1914 (one of the world’s first female military aviators) and flew missions with the 26th Corps Air Squadron in 1917 for nine months. Because of her connections to the Imperial family she was demobilized after the October Revolution. Lyubov A. Golanchikova was a test pilot, contributed her airplane to the Czarist armies; Helen P. Samsonova was assigned to the 5th Corps Air Squadron as a reconnaissance pilot. And in 1915, Nedeshda Degtereva had the distinction of being the first woman pilot to be wounded in combat while on a reconnaissance mission over the Austrian front in Galicia.

[edit] World War II

Marina Raskova

Lydia Litvyak

Women, members of Kovpak's partisan formation in the Ukraine

Women played a large part in most of the armed forces of the Second World War. In most countries though, women tended to serve mostly in administrative, medical and in auxiliary roles. But in the Soviet Union women fought in larger numbers in front line roles. Over 800,000 women served their Motherland in World War II, nearly 200,000 of them decorated and 89 of those women eventually received the Soviet Union’s highest award, the Hero of the Soviet Union. They served as pilots, snipers, machine gunners, tank crew members and partisans, as well as in auxiliary roles. [1] Very few of these women, however, were ever promoted to officers.

The Russian military at the outbreak of war was reluctant to see women play a significant combat role. The propaganda machine under Joseph Stalin promoted equality and he was keen to pronounce female advancement and equality. But in reality, the rigidity of the communist regime and continuing chauvinistic attitudes hindered progress. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, thousands of women who volunteered were turned away.

Two factors influenced change and a greater role for women who wanted to fight. Firstly the loses to the Germans after their initial success in 1941. And secondly, the efforts of determined women keen to play a greater role. The fastest way for women to advance in the military in the early stages of the war was to serve in medical units, auxiliary units such as the Voluntary Society for the Support of the Air Force and as members of the Communist Union of Youth.

For Soviet women aviators, instrumental to this change was Marina Raskova, a famous Russian aviator, often referred to as the ‘Russian Amelia Earhart’. Raskova became a famous aviator as both a pilot and a navigator in the 1930s. She was the first woman to become a navigator in the Soviet Air Force in 1933. A year later she started teaching at the Zhukovskii Air Academy, also a first for a woman. When World War II broke out, there were numerous women who had training as pilots and many immediately volunteered. While there were no formal restrictions on women serving in combat roles, their applications tended to be blocked, run through red tape, etc for as long as possible in order to discourage them from seeing combat. Raskova is credited with using her personal connections with Joseph Stalin to convince the military to form three combat regiments for women. Not only would the women be pilots, but the support staff and engineers for these regiments were women. The Soviet Union was the first nation to allow women pilots to fly combat missions. These regiments flew a combined total of more than 30,000 combat sorties, produced at least thirty Heroes of the Soviet Union, and included at least two fighter aces. This military unit was initially called Aviation Group 122 while the three regiments received training. After their training, the three regiments received their formal designations as follows:

The 586th Fighter Aviation Regiment: This unit was the first to take part in combat (April 16, 1942) of the three female regiments and participated in 4,419 combat missions (125 air battles and 38 kills). Lydia Litvyak and Katya Budanova were assigned to the unit before joining the 437th IAP in the fighting over Stalingrad and became the world's only two female fighter aces (with 12 and 11 victories respectively), both flying the Yak-1 fighter.

The 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment: This was the best known of the regiments and was commanded by Yevdokia Bershanskaya. It originally began service as the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, but was redesignated in February 1943 as recognition for service which would tally 24,000+ combat missions by the end of the war. Their aircraft was the Polikarpov Po-2, a very outdated biplane. The Germans were the ones however who gave them the name that they are most well known as, The Night Witches.

The 125th Guards Bomber Aviation Regiment: Marina Raskova commanded this unit until her death in combat, and then the unit was assigned to Valentin Markov. It started service as the 587th Bomber Aviation Regiment until it was given the Guards designation in September 1943.

The Soviet Union also used women for sniping duties extensively, and to great effect, including Nina Alexeyevna Lobkovskaya and Ukrainian Lyudmila Pavlichenko (who killed over 300 German soldiers). The Soviets found that sniper duties fit women well, since good snipers are patient, careful, deliberate, can avoid hand-to-hand combat, and need higher levels of aerobic conditioning than other troops. Women also served as machine gunners, tank drivers, medics, communication personnel and political officers. Manshuk Mametova was a machine gunner from Kazakhstan and was the first Soviet Asian woman to receive the Hero of the Soviet Union for acts of bravery.

At the end of June 1941, immediately after German forces crossed the Soviet border, the Communist Party ordered Party members to organize an underground resistance in the occupied territories. Although formal creation was ordered in 1941, it was only in 1942-43 that underground cells sprang up throughout Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russian regions. Soviet partisans waged guerrilla warfare against the occupiers, and enjoyed increasing support from the local population which was antagonized by German brutality. Although the partisans themselves would also be responsible for brutal actions. Women consisted of significant numbers of the partisans. One of the most famous was Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. In October of 1941, still an 18 year old high school student in Moscow, she volunteered for a partisan unit. At the village of Obukhovo near Naro-Fominsk, Kosmodemyanskaya and other partisans crossed the front line and entered territory occupied by the Germans. She was arrested by the Nazis on a combat assignment near the village of Petrischevo (Moscow Oblast) in late November 1941. Kosmodemyanskaya was savagely tortured and humiliated, but did not give away the names of her comrades or her real name (claiming that it was Tanya). She was hanged on November 29, 1941. It was claimed that before her death Kosmodemyanskaya had made a speech with the closing words, “There are two hundred million of us, you can’t hang us all!” Kosmodemyanskaya was the first woman to become Hero of the Soviet Union (February 16, 1942).

The youngest woman to become a Hero of the Soviet Union was also a resistance fighter, Zinaida Portnova. She was visiting an aunt when the Germans invaded and was trapped behind German lines. In 1942, aged 15, after seeing the brutality of the occupying troops, Portnova joined the Belarusian resistance movement. She hid weapons for partisans, distributed leaflets and conducted sabotage. In January 1944 she was captured. She shot one of her captors whilst trying to escape but was caught and killed, just short of her 18th birthday. In 1958 Portnova was posthumously made a Hero of the Soviet Union, there is a monument to her in the city of Minsk and some youth pioneer movement detachments were named after her.

[edit] Post 1945

After the war, most women left the armed forces. Those that stayed to make a career in the post-war armed forces saw old attitudes return and promotion and opportunities more difficult and some military academies closed their doors to women despite the supposed official policy of equality. In 1967, the Russian Universal Military Duty Laws concluded that women offered the greater source of available combat soldiers during periods of large scale mobilisation. Thus, several programs during the height of the Cold War were set up to encourage women to enlist. Participation in military orientated youth programs and forced participation in the reserves for ex-servicewomen up to the age of 40 are some examples. Universities contained reservist officer training which accompanied a place in the reserves themselves, especially for doctors. But some roles open to women during the war were now barred.

Women have had the legal right to serve in the Russian Armed Forces throughout the post Cold War period. In 2002, 10% of the Russian armed forces (100,000 of a total active strength of 988,100) were women.^[1]