Saturday, August 26, 2017

Anti-Fascist People's War

"The Unwomanly Face of War - an Oral History of Women in World War II," by Svetlana Alexievich, 1985, translated into English, 2017

More than a one million Russian girls and women fought in World War II, defending the USSR from the German/Axis invasion.  This is the greatest military mobilization of women in history and reflective of its character in the USSR as a 'peoples war.'  For all the bourgeois feminists in the U.S. who celebrate the strides that U.S. women have recently made in the U.S. army, these stories show who was first.  Alexievich tells the personal, emotional memories of these women, be they nurses, snipers, partisans, underground fighters, pilots, signal-women, communication operators, corps-women, railway workers, engineers, anti-aircraft officers, doctors, truck drivers, tank mechanics, cooks, washers, sappers or front-line troops.  One woman sniper killed 75 Germans.  No position was closed to females.

The Motherland Incarnate
Alexievich is not a socialist or communist but she is a journalist who specializes in oral histories.  She won the 2015 Nobel prize for this kind of work.  These brutal, sad or wonderful stories are told from the unique point of view of mostly older women reflecting on their lost, youthful lives in the war.  The book took 26 years to compile, so the book covers a very broad range of women and time.  These kind of emotional and personal tales have been ignored in the broad canvas of 'history unfolding,' or whatever you want to call the traditional view of war - the movement of armies, the actions of generals, the technology of death.  But through them you can see what it was really like for the Soviet citizen in the midst of this horror.

A few reflections, as there are hundreds of interviews here.  Memory is obviously a tricky thing, made up of emotions, choices and impacts, not some linear, perfect process.  Alexievich recognizes this and understands that memory creates itself.  

Leaving Home:  Many stories start with the traumatic moment they hear that the war has started.  Girls in school, at home, shopping.  Most want to immediately volunteer, even if they were only 15.  The too young girls are so persistent they talk their way into some position in the army or sneak into the services on the back of a truck. Older Komosol girls (youth section of the CP) are taken immediately.  Many volunteer and whole trainloads of girls headed to the Front.  These girls would not think of leaving the defense of the 'Motherland' to just men and boys.  Dying for the cause was taught in school as was the equality between girls and boys. 

Clothes:  Clothes were a big issue for the girls and women.  The Soviet Army had no real clothes for women initially, especially in the small sizes of teenage girls.  So the boots are too big, the pants billowing, the shirts hang, the underwear is bulky men's underwear and there are no supplied bras.  Menstruation is difficult. Clothing even changed the way the women walked.  Only after two years of war women's underwear begins to be supplied to the army.

Love:  Some girls found husbands or lovers in the armed forces.  They watched them die.  They formed life-long bonds.  They got crushes on men that disappeared.  For many, this was their first love, as they were very young.  For some, their last.    

Children:  Some women had to leave their children behind, with relatives, with neighbors.  Some even took them into the war - with the partisans in the forests, in military units.  One women actually drowned her baby because it was crying while her partisan unit was hiding in swamp waters.  When the women returned to their homes, they were sometimes unrecognized by the children they had to leave behind.  One woman arrived back home on a horse, with a short haircut, a side-arm and military clothes.  Who is she, the child wondered?

Stalin:  For some women, Stalin, the War and the Victory were closely identified and this emotional connection continued throughout their lives. For others, some of whom lost Communist or peasant brothers or fathers to the prison camps, Stalin was a failure who left the USSR totally unprepared for a German assault, losing millions of Soviet soldiers to death or capture in a month; who jailed and shot the majority of experienced Red Army generals in 1937; who imprisoned innocent Soviet soldiers or partisans after they had been captured by the Germans. These are the most political sections and indicate that the war was won, not because of Stalin, but sometimes in spite of him.  The May 9 'Victory" was a victory for the whole Russian people, a true victory of 'peoples war.'   

Blood:  Nearly all the girls and women in these stories did not know how they would behave under fire or bombardment or with injuries or around death - like any new soldier would.  Nearly all managed to get through the first hellish experiences.  However, some clearly had PTSD.   One woman smelled blood almost everywhere, which made her sick to her stomach.  One could not have anything red in her house.  For the nurses and corps-women, blood soaked their clothes constantly, dried and stiff, and they had to get used to it.

Kindness:  The officers and men of the Soviet Army treated the women with kindness and tried to protect and help them.  Sexual assaults were very rare, at least in these pages.  Commanders acted like good fathers in many instances. The girls, who hated the Germans, nevertheless found themselves helping and feeding the German wounded. 

The Germans:  The German Wehrmacht killed prisoners and civilians, sometimes using kerosene to burn a village church or school filled with people.  The Germans killed and sometimes mutilated all captured women.  Contrary to this, the Soviet Army rules did not allow German prisoners to be killed, nor German civilians - though there were rapes.  There is no 'equivalency' between the two sides, as the bourgeois press likes to pretend.

Hair & Makeup:  Women had to cut their hair - not even braids were allowed, so some sneakily attempted to let it grow, curl it, dye and comb it.   They created on-site make-up.  Other military women felt that they had to wait until the war was over to become 'womanly' again, as it was disloyal to do it while in the war.

Roles:  Women were in every branch of the service, even in the navy, which had a superstition against women on ships.  Girls and women formed the legendary 'Night Witches," which flew small, old planes just above the treetops by sight, in the night.  They held positions in various parts of the armed forces, from private to officer, and led men in a good number of instances. 

Physical Tasks:  Young, small women hauled wounded men by crawling with them on their backs through mud, over earth, time and time again.  One woman hauled 481 wounded soldiers from under fire. Rifles taller than they.  Endless heavy basins of dirty water to wash clothes in.  Heavy artillery shells.  Digging deep anti-tank ditches.  Building bridges.  Constant hunger and stress, which turned one young women's hair grey at 19.

Coming Home:  Women that did not go into the Soviet army slurred the military women as 'whores' and 'unwomanly' and attempted to cut them off from male relationships when they returned home.  Nothing is left in many of the villages they return to.  Many men are dead and the female ex-soldiers must begin the heavy work of harvesting, plowing, planting alone, or with young children.  Women later became a much larger part of the Soviet working class that labored outside the home.

The Soviet experience in WWII is somewhat of a mystery to the majority of people in the U.S., who think the U.S. played the main role in beating the Axis at "D-day" with their 'Band of  Brothers."  Au contraire.  These stories range geographically from villages to Stalingrad to Leningrad to Berlin.  After the war, the role of women in the USSR rose because of their war-time experiences, not just as "Rosie the Riveter" but as "Rosa the Soldier." These remembrances give 'women's liberation' a whole new meaning - perhaps one middle-class U.S. feminists are not used to.      

Prior reviews on women in the USSR:  "Women in Soviet Art," "Soviet Women: Walking the Tightrope."  Use blog search box, upper left. 

Red Frog
August 26,2017

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