Lady Death

 “The Diamond Eye” by Kate Quinn, 2022

This is the story of Soviet sniper Lyudmila ('Mila') Pavlichenko, who had 309 official kills in WWII and many more unofficial ones, as sometimes she shot into massed troops or could not prove a kill. She estimated around 400, with 39 of these kills enemy snipers. She is the female equivalent of Stalingrad's Vassili Ziatsev depicted in the book “Enemy at the Gates.” Quinn's method as an author is “historical fiction” based on extensive research, Pavlichenko's diary, fleshed out scenes, imagined dialog and made-up melodrama.

Mila was a young history student and a single mother who, according to this story, stood up to her obnoxious and arrogant estranged husband by learning how to shoot at a sniper school. She enlisted in the Soviet Army the day after the Nazis invaded the USSR, having spent the previous day at the beach in Odessa and an evening at the ballet. The Army almost didn't take her. Her first weapon was a shovel, but a soldier next to her was injured and she inherited his rifle.

The WAR

The story involves the relentless 1941-1942 assault against the southern USSR by fascist Romanian and German armies. Mila's first kills are described, her promotions, her training squads of snipers, her injuries and her comradeship with another Siberian sniper and a tough nurse. Her constant fight against male chauvinism in the ranks of the Chapayev Rifle Division is highlighted. She fights through the retreat from the initial Ukrainian front, through the siege of Odessa to the siege of Sevastopol in the Crimea. From there she reluctantly goes on tour with Soviet officials around the world, including to the U.S.

Being a sniper involves more than being able to bulls-eye a target. It means being good at camouflage, at digging in, at silence, at waiting, at calmness, at building a nest. It means understanding wind, elevation, distance, sight-lines, geography and the capacities of the weapon. It also means getting good intel and knowing enemy routines. In this case her sniper rifles were a bolt-action Mosin-Nagant 7.62x39 and for a short time the inadequate semi-auto Tokarev SVT 40. Later she got a special telescopic sight and carried a Tokarev 7.62x25 pistol for close-in defense.

Mila finds a solid shooting partner in a 'wolfish' Siberian hunter, Kostia, who is her second in command. She has to fend off creepy officers who want a 'front-line wife.' During the defense of Sevastopol, a charming officer and wit named Kitsenko backs her up against her boresome commander, yet stayed respectful. He gives her blood when she is wounded, after which she is melodramatically operated on by her nasty estranged husband, Alexei, a doctor. Mila survives, engages in some excellent shooting, and pledges to marry Kitsenko after they have a front-line romance in his underground officer's bunker. 

Romance is one of Quinn's fortés ... and Mila's continuing contact with exe Alexei is a pure fabrication. It also casts doubt on the other romance scenes in the book. In reality Mila married Kitsenko in Odessa and he was killed soon afterward. Mila is submarined out of Sevastopol before the disastrous and fated surrender of the Southern Soviet Army in July 1942. The book hints at the massive casualties inflicted on that army, as it was overrun and captured on that isolated peninsula by the Hitlerites. A strategic mistake, that.

Mila with Eleanor Roosevelt

THE TOUR

On the 1942 Soviet delegation's trip to the States and Canada, the chauvinist press and the half-wit civilians call Mila a girl, think she's lying about killing 309 soldiers and are stupefied that women in the USSR have more rights than their precious ladies. They ask about makeup, criticize her clothes and ask about her underwear. They say so many stupid things she is stunned and irritated.

The point of the tour is to get the Allies to initiate a real Second Front instead of waiting for the Soviets to be bled dry ... which they were doing. Patriotic American 'war experts' who study WWII always miss this long delay. It was only in September 1943 that Allied units invaded Italy, finishing the fight in May 1945. In June 1944 Allied forces finally landed at Normandy and actually began fighting in the main geography of the war, 770 miles from Berlin and more than one and a half years after Pavlichenko's tour. This was because Soviet armies were already heading west towards Berlin.

Quinn packs the book with sly digs at the typical rigidities of the Soviet system, as she is not Comrade Quinn. The book also has an absurd sub-plot about a right-wing assassin in Washington D.C. waiting to shoot FDR and blame it on Pavilchenko, who is staying in the White House courtesy of Eleanor Roosevelt. This seems to be a fictional reflection of two earlier assassination attempts on FDR. This fake plot-line and its fanciful 'sniper duel' ending mar the whole book, adding 50 pages of hooey. Quinn doesn't just write about history – like a Hollywood movie she also fakes it. Mila was one of 2,000 female snipers in the Soviet army. She taught snipers after this tour, then after the war finished her degree, became an historian, worked for the Soviet Navy, suffered from PTSD and alcoholism and died in 1974. Salute Comrade Mila!

P.S. - The Russian film on Youtube, "Battle of Sevastopol," is her story, with another mix of romances.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Enemy at the Gates,” “Red Valkyries,” “The Unwomanly Face of War” (Alexievich); “Life and Fate” (Grossman); “Soviet Women,” “Panzer Destroyer,” “Amsterdam,” “War is a Racket” or the word 'feminism.'    Woody Guthrie even wrote a song about her: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSQBzlqEybM

And I got it at the Library!

Red Frog

March 27 2023