A Thousand Sisters

by Elizabeth Wein

“We were next in line . . . a successful mission”: ibid., 134.

  “We felt it dragging us back to earth”: ibid.

  “It was a victory . . . over ourselves”: ibid.

  In February 1945, when they were in western: Pennington 2001, 73.

  “I made the flight . . . It was snowing very hard”: Zoya Parfyonova in Noggle, 71.

  “German infantrymen began . . . wounded in the leg”: ibid.

  In a shaking, damaged aircraft: ibid., 72.

  By March, the fields were so muddy: Alexandra Akimova in Noggle, 93.

  “pilots’ rations of vodka, biscuits, and milk”: ibid.

  As the hard frosts grew less reliable: Antonina Vakhromeyeva in Cottam 1997, 190; Irina Rakobolskaya in Noggle, 28.

  Finally, the ground crew would lift: Antonina Vakhromeyeva in Cottam 1997, 190.

  “Our regiment made 300 combat . . . those conditions”: Irina Rakobolskaya in Noggle, 28.

  When she’d been captured: Nina Karaseva in Cottam 1997, 89–90.

  Nina saw firsthand the undiluted horror: ibid., 91.

  Every last Soviet citizen liberated: Overy, 261.

  That’s exactly what happened to Tamara: Tamara Pamyatnykh in Noggle, 162.

  The 46th Guards made their way steadily: Pennington 2001, 73.

  stationed north of Berlin: Irina Rakobolskaya in Noggle, 28; Pennington 2001, 88.

  “But why did . . . What did they want?”: Vasily Grossman in Grossman, 342.

  How could the people who owned: Grossman, 341; Irina Rakobolskaya, quoted in Markwick & Cardona 2012, 116.

  “Everybody knew that the end . . . no one wanted to die”: Polina Gelman in Noggle, 42.

  But the commanders were eager: ibid.

  “It could be on . . . anyone”: ibid.

  “Everything was ready . . . I burst out crying”: ibid.

  everyone was in bed and no one: Yekaterina Fedotova in Cottam 1997, 116.

  “The war has ended!”: Masha Kirillova quoted by Yekaterina Fedotova in Cottam 1997, 116.

  “We just couldn’t believe it . . . we cried”: Galina Brok-Beltsova in Cottam 1997, 131.

  But hugging and kissing weren’t enough: Yekaterina Fedotova in Cottam 1997, 116.

  The 586th Regiment lined up: Vera Tikhomirova in Cottam 1997, 354.

  “To the Homeland . . . bravely and fell . . .”: Regimental victory song of the 586th Regiment as quoted by Nina Potapova in Cottam, 348.

  “I wanted to cry . . . ‘Yes, I’ll marry you’”: Anonymous pilot quoted in Alexievich 2017, xvii.

  CHAPTER 37: ONE THOUSAND NIGHTS IN COMBAT

  “After the war we had . . . one thousand nights in combat”: Serafima Amosova-Taranenko in Noggle, 47.

  Mariya Smirnova, who flew 935: Mariya Smirnova in Noggle, 31.

  In their three years on the front: Pennington 2001, 73.

  In the winter’s long darknesses: Olga Yerokhina-Averjanova in Noggle, 60.

  Twenty-four of these women were given: Cottam 1997, 148; Merry, 107; Markwick & Cardona 2012, 97; Noggle, 20; Pennington 2001, 72, 265.

  Quality, not quantity, shines in the 1,134: Cottam 1997, 29–30; Pennington 2001, 90.

  Five women in the regiment were awarded: Noggle, 100; Pennington 2001, 90.

  They made over nine thousand solo flights: Merry, 105; Noggle, 159; Yekaterina Polunina in Noggle, 164; Pennington 2001, 104, 125.

  A frustrating epilogue to their story: Merry, 106; Pennington 2001, 122, 124.

  Twenty-five years after Lilya Litvyak: Cottam 1998, 153.

  A stone monument in her memory: Inna Pasportnikova in Noggle, 194.

  Inna Pasportnikova, who’d been: Vinogradova 2015, 313.

  “We found thirty aircraft but not hers”: Inna Pasportnikova in Noggle, 199.

  In 1979, Inna discovered: Cottam 1998, 154; Pennington 2001, 141.

  On May 5, 1990, nearly fifty: Cottam 1998, 154; Inna Pasportnikova in Noggle, 200; Pennington 2001, 141.

  Cautious estimates begin: Overy, xvi.

  how many Soviet airwomen: Merry, 112.

  Yevgeniya Zhigulenko, a 46th Guards pilot, said: ibid.

  Reina Pennington, counting staff: Pennington 2001, 177–92; see also Merry, 112, and Noggle, 159.

  CHAPTER 38: “DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE SERVICES YOU HAVE RENDERED”

  “Women in the USSR . . . social and political life”: Article 122 of the 1936 Constitution of the USSR.

  “absolute equal opportunity with men”: Klavdiya Ilushina in Noggle, 49.

  “were frustrated . . . levels of the military”: Harris 2008, 223.

  Posters printed in the 1930s: ibid., 29.

  “In this unusual war . . . with arms in hand”: M. I. Kalinin, 455.

  Kalinin pointed out right away: ibid., 459.

  which it did: Markwick & Cardona 2012, 235.

  “Do not give yourself . . . That will be better”: M. I. Kalinin, 459–60.

  they had to sign a pledge: Markwick & Cardona 2012, 233.

  His opinion was that women were: Cottam 1998, xxi; Wasps and Witches, 48:28 ff.

  The Red Army closed down: Merry, 122.

  Many women who had flown: Mariya Smirnova in Noggle, 37.

  “Life is life . . . especially for a woman”: Ludmila Popova in Noggle, 147.

  “You can’t have . . . no woman’s soul”: Antonina Grigoryevna Bondareva quoting her (unnamed) sister-in-law in Alexievich 2017, 288.

  “Many of us left . . . We stayed women”: Antonina Grigoryevna Bondareva in Alexievich 2017, 289.

  “The very nature . . . to help our people”: Alexandra Akimova in Noggle, 94.

  “I myself could not . . . all the women too”: Alexandra Makunina in Noggle, 166.

  Masha Dolina, the 125th Guards: L. Yerusalimchik in Cottam 1997, 74–75.

  “I want you to underline . . . to fight—to kill”: Mariya Dolina in Noggle, 119.

  She kept the promise she’d made: Vinogradova 2015, 303.

  female veterans of World War II began: Markwick & Cardona, 233.

  over thirty more memoirs: Harris 2008, 217.

  But the young women who played the roles: Yevgeniya Zhigulenko, in Dlugach, 15.

  By 1941, nearly one-third of all: Gibson, 119; Merry, 105; Christine A. White in Noggle, 6–7, 14; Pennington 2001, 10; Strebe 2009, 22.

  “physiologically unsuitable . . . civilian pilots”: Cottam 1998, xxi.

  Today, about 12 percent: Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Civil Airmen Statistics 2015, Tables 1 & 2; Goyer 2010; Carsenat & Rossini, 2014.

  American government decided: Merry, 115; Strebe 2009, 64.

  Because they’d never been connected: Merry, 134.

  The British ATA continued ferrying aircraft: Curtis, 284; Merry, 123.

  British flying jobs went: Jackie Moggridge in Wasps and Witches, 47:50 ff.

  Mariya Akilina, from the 46th: Mariya Akilina in Noggle, 98.

  Alexandra Krivonogova, from the 125th: A. M. Bereznitskaya in Cottam 1997, 103–4.

  Several pilots from the 586th also: Pennington 2001, 150.

  Galina Burdina flew as a civilian: Glancey, December 15, 2001.

  Tamara Pamyatnykh became an air: Agniya Polyantseva in Cottam 1997, 265.

  The 125th Guards weren’t officially: Pennington 2001, 103.

  “I often have dreams . . . my favorite dream”: Antonina Bondareva-Spitsina in Noggle, 109.

  In Russia in 1998: Cottam 1998, 24; Merry, 130.

  It took Svetlana Protasova: Babichev, 1997; Strebe 2009, 80–81; Warren, July 8, 1999.

  by 2004 she was struggling: Chechneva, 2016.

  Few Russian women who became: Marina Bouraia, quoted in Brock, 2016.

  “Among pilots, there are . . . with the industry”: Anastasia Dagaeva, in BBC News Europe, “The Ballerina Who Takes to the Skies,” August 30, 2017.

  The good news is that in October 2017: BBC News Europe, “Russia to Train Female Fighter Pilots,” August 13, 2017; Egorov, October 4, 2017; Peck, 2017.

/>   “I have more than . . . eighth of November”: Zoya Malkova in Noggle, 219.

  The members of Marina Raskova’s regiments: Harris 2008, 230.

  With no uniforms, they would dress: Krylova 2010, 3.

  Later, as they ate and drank: Noggle, 317.

  “The war made us not . . . I go to meet my sisters”: Anna Kirilina in Noggle, 124.

  Bibliography

  We are very lucky that so many of the Soviet women aviators who served during the Great Patriotic War kept diaries, wrote memoirs, and gave interviews. We have firsthand accounts of their incredible wartime experiences spent in the air and on the ground. Like anyone’s memories, they are not always accurate; and they lose further accuracy in translation into English. But taken as a whole, they are real. They tell an emotional and historical truth that is worth celebrating.

  I do not read Russian, which to my mind has sorely limited my ability to research this book. I have a rudimentary knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet and can make sense of a text or title using Google Translate, so I have been able to browse some of my sources in rough translation. In this bibliography, I include several Russian publications either because they are important to this study (like Marina Raskova’s autobiography, Notes of a Navigator) or because they have been referred to or quoted in English in my own sources.

  MEMOIRS

  Alexievich, Svetlana. The Unwomanly Face of War. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. London: Penguin Books, 2017. First published 1985.

  Aronova, Raisa E. Night Witches (in Russian as Nochnye ved’my). Revised and expanded second edition. Moscow: Sovetskaya Rossiya, 1980. First published 1969.

  Burgess, Helene. “Facing the Future Unafraid” [memoirs of Nadezhda Popova]. In Our Lives, Our Dreams: Soviet Women Speak. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1988.

  Cottam, Kazimiera Janina, editor and translator. In the Sky above the Front: A Collection of Memoirs of Soviet Airwomen Participants in the Great Patriotic War. Manhattan, KS: Kansas State University, 1984.

  ———. Soviet Airwomen in Combat in World War II. Manhattan, KS: Military Affairs/Aerospace Historian, 1983.

  ———. Women in Air War: The Eastern Front of World War II. New York: Legas, 1997.

  Dlugach, Alexander. “Those Magnificent Women in Their Flying Machines” [Interview with Yevgeniya Zhigulenko]. Soviet Life, May 1990, 12–13, 15.

  Dokutovich, Galina. The Heart and the Wings: Diary of a Navigator of a Women’s Aviation Regiment (in Belorussian as Sertsa I kryly. Dzennik shturmana zhanochaga aviyatsyinaga palka). Minsk: State Publishing House of the Belorussian SSR, 1957.

  Dubova, Anna Akimovna. “Living Someone Else’s Life.” In A Revolution of Their Own: Voices of Women in Soviet History. Edited by Barbara Alpern Engel and Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck et al. and translated by Sona Hoisington, 17–37. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998.

  Durova, Nadezhda. The Cavalry Maiden: Journals of a Female Russian Officer in the Napoleonic Wars. Translated by Mary Fleming Zirin. London: Paladin, 1990.

  Grossman, Vasily. A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–1945. Edited and translated by Antony Beevor and L[y]uba Vinogradova. London: Pimlico, 2006.

  Kazarinova, M. A., and A. A. Polyantseva, editors. In the Sky above the Front: A Collection of Memoirs of Soviet Pilots Participating in the Great Patriotic War (in Russian as V nebe frontovom: sbornik vospominanii sovetskikh letchits-uchastnits Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny). 2nd ed. Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya, 1971. First published 1962.

  Keyssar, Helene G., and Vladimir Willem Pozner. Remembering War: A U.S.-Soviet Dialogue. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

  Levin, I. S. The Terrible Years (in Russian as Groznye Gody). Saratov: Privolzhskoe, 1984. http://militera.lib.ru/memo/russian/levin_is/pre.html.

  Litvinova, Larisa. “Women’s Regiment of Night Bombers.” In The Road of Battle and Glory. Edited by I. Danishevsky and translated by David Skvirsky. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d. [1977].

  Markova, Galina Ivanovna. Youth Under Fire: The Story of Klavdiya Fomicheva, A Woman Dive Bomber Pilot. Edited and translated by Kazimiera Janina Cottam. In Soviet Airwomen in Combat in World War II, 65–131. Manhattan, KS: Military Affairs/Aerospace Historian, 1983.

  Newman, Dina. “Soviet Woman Bomber Pilot.” Interview with Yelena Malyutina and Lyuba Vinogradova. Witness, BBC World Service, December 6, 2016. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04j9sk3.

  Noggle, Anna. A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. First published 1994.

  Polunina, Yekaterina. Girls, Girlfriends, Pilots (in Russian as Devchonki, podruzhki, letchitsy). Moscow: Vestnik Vozdushnogo Flota, 2004.

  Raskova, Marina. Notes of a Navigator (in Russian as Zapiski Shturmana). Moscow: Central Committee of the Komsomol “Young Guard,” 1939.

  Rudneva, Yevgeniya (Zhenya). For as Long as My Heart Is Beating: Diaries and Letters of Hero of the Soviet Union Yevgeniya Rudneva (in Russian as Poka stuchit serdtse: Dnevniki i pisma Geroya Sovetskovo Soyuza Evgenii Rudnevoi). Edited by I. V. Rakobolskaya. 3rd ed. Moscow: Izdatelstvo Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1995. First published 1955 by Molodaya Gvardiya (Moscow).

  Saywell, Shelley. Women in War: First-Hand Accounts from World War II to El Salvador. Tunbridge Wells, UK: Costello, 1987.

  Timofeyeva-Yegorova, Anna. Red Sky, Black Death: A Soviet Woman Pilot’s Memoir of the Eastern Front. Translated by Margarita Ponomaryova and Kim Green. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2009.

  Zhigulenko, Yevgeniya Andreyevna. Oral history in Remembering War: A U.S.-Soviet Dialogue, by Helene G. Keyssar and Vladimir Willem Pozner, 37–45. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

  NEWSPAPER & MAGAZINE ARTICLES, 1936–1944

  Amarillo (TX) Globe. “Ship Will Be Named for Soviet Woman.” September 3, 1943, 9.

  Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ). “Woman Becomes Soviet Air Ace.” June 11, 1936, 18.

  Asbury Park (NJ) Press. “Radio Programs for 24 Hours: Wednesday’s Highlights.” February 3, 1943, 14.

  Blitzstein, Madelin. “How Women Flyers Fight Russia’s Air War.” Aviation, July 19, 1944, 115–117, 255, 257.

  Chicago Tribune. “Aid Dropped by Parachute to 3 Soviet Women Fliers.” October 5, 1938, 23.

  Chillicothe (MO) Constitution-Tribune. “Establishes New Status for Women.” Women’s Pages. January 20, 1939, 4.

  Daily Chronicle (De Kalb, IL). “Find Airplane Lost for Week.” October 4, 1938, 7.

  Gettysburg (PA) Times. “Russia Has Noted Women War Flyers.” December 27, 1943, 6.

  Los Angeles Times. “City Hunting for Source of ‘Gas Attack.’” July 27, 1943, 1.

  Maurer, Rose. “Those Russian Women.” Survey Graphic, February 1944, 109, 152, 155, 157.

  Moats, Alice Leone. “Russian Women at War.” Collier’s Weekly, October 18, 1941, 18, 49–51.

  Parker, Ralph. “Moscow Hails Tanya.” New York Times Magazine, March 22, 1942, 11. www.nytimes.com/1942/03/22/archives/moscow-hails-tanya.html.

  ———. “Women Workers of the Russian Miracle.” New York Times Magazine, February 14, 1943, 18. www.nytimes.com/1943/02/14/archives/women-workers-of-the-russian-miracle-mobilized-for-war-like-the-men.html.

  Pittsburgh Press. “Famed Soviet Woman Flier, Bomber Commander, Killed.” January 9, 1943, 1.

  Skariatina, Irina. “The Fearless Women of Russia.” Collier’s Weekly, November 7, 1942, 15, 46, 48–49.

  Stewart, Charles P. “Washington at a Glance.” Washington C.H. (OH) Record-Herald, September 20, 1941, 4.

  Troy (NY) Record. “Ship Named after Russian Girl Pilot Launched Today.” June 22, 1943, 13.

  Wilmington (DE) Morning News. “Women Fliers Mentioned.” April 5, 1943, 11.

  OTHER PRIMARY SOURCES

  1936 Constitution of the USSR. Bucknell University, Russian Studies Department Website. Adopted December 1936. www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/const/36cons01.html.

  Aeronautical Chamber
of Commerce of America. The Aircraft Yearbook for 1935. Vol. 17. New York: Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America, 1935.

  ———. The Aircraft Yearbook for 1938. Vol. 20. New York: Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America, 1938.

  Federal Aviation Administration. U.S. Civil Airmen Statistics 2015. Oklahoma City: Federal Aviation Administration Aeronautical Center, 2015. www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/civil_airmen_statistics/media/2015-civil-airmen-stats.xlsx.

  Gruliow, Leo, and Sidonie K. Lederer. Russia Fights Famine: A Russian War Relief Report. New York: Russian War Relief, n.d. [Summer 1943]. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924013759117;view=1up;seq=3.

  Kalinin, M. I. “Glorious Daughters of the Soviet People.” In On Communist Education: Selected Speeches and Articles, 455–60. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950.

  Krupskaya, Nadezhda. The Woman Worker. Translated by Mick Costello. Nottingham, UK: Manifesto Press, 2017. First published 1900 by Iskra (Saint Petersburg).

  Lenin, V. I. The April Theses: The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution (levellerreprints 002). London: Leveller Reprints, 2011. First published April 7, 1917 in Pravda, 26.

  ———. Women and Society (Little Lenin Library 23). New York: International Publishers, 1938.

  Stalin, Josef. On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union [November 6, 1941–September 3, 1945]. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1946. Prepared for the Internet by David J. Romagnolo, 2003. www.archive.org/stream/OnTheGreatPatrioticWarOfTheSovietUnion/GPW_djvu.txt.

  ———. On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union: Speeches, Orders of the Day, and Answers to Foreign Press Correspondents [July 3, 1941–September 25, 1943]. London: Hutchinson, n.d. [1944?].

  Trotsky, Leon. The History of the Russian Revolution. Translated by Max Eastman. 3 vols. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1932. www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/index.htm.

  SOURCES ON THE SOVIET AIRWOMEN

  Atkins, Violet, and William Bacher. Diary of a Red Army Woman. In Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection. Vol. 4, Battle Cry, A Screenplay by William Faulkner, edited by Louis Daniel Brodsky and Robert W. Hamblin, 19–57. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985.

  Belyakov, Vladimir. “Russia’s Women Top Guns.” Aviation History, March 2002, 34–40.