A Portrait of a Young Woman as the Citizen-Soldier

Anna Krylova

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511762383.002

This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

1 - A Portrait of a Young Woman as the Citizen-Soldier

from Part One - Before the Front, 1930s

Anna Krylova

Show author details

Anna Krylova: Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Introduction: “My Fascist, as a Result, Remained Alive. And That Was Very Upsetting”

Late in the afternoon of February 26, 1939, Evgeniia Rudneva, a nineteen-year-old student in the Moscow State University mechanics and mathematics department, returned home in a “grief-stricken” (priskorbnyi) mood. Her machine-gun practice at the Kuskovo shooting range near Moscow had been nothing to be proud of. “I had to shoot with the hand machine gun,” Rudneva wrote in her diary. “I had to hold it in my hand and, of course, not one of twenty-five bullets hit the target. My fascist, as a result, remained alive. And that was very upsetting.” In response to her failure, Rudneva made a resolution: to learn to use the legendary heavy machine gun of the Civil War – the Maxim – and to “by all means, pass all the norms” for the Maxim badge. Six months later, Rudneva reported back to her diary that she had become master-sergeant of the machine-gun training group of her mechanics and mathematics department.

Like the majority of her contemporaries who participated in paramilitary training on the eve of World War II, Rudneva strove for mastery of the machine gun without entertaining a thought of turning the military into her life calling. Through her determined military practice, Rudneva claimed a different identity to legitimate her participation in combat: that of the citizen-soldier. She trained diligently, preparing herself to defend her Soviet country, according to her diary, when “the [war] hour comes.

Type: Chapter
Information: Soviet Women in Combat
A History of Violence on the Eastern Front
, pp. 35 - 84

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511762383.002 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Rudneva, Evgeniia, Dnevniki I pisma Geroia Sovetskogo Soiuza Evgenii Rudnevoi, 3rd Edition (Moskva: Izdatelstvo Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1995), 66Google Scholar

Simonov, Konstantin, Glazami cheloveka moego pokoleniia. Razmyshleniia o I. V. Staline (Moskva: “Kniga,” 1990), 63Google Scholar

Ketlinskaia, V., Muzhestvo (Moskva: Molodaia gvardiia, 1972)Google Scholar

Pavlenko, P., Na Vostoke (Moskva: Sovetskii pisatel, 1937), 334Google Scholar

Ostriakov, S., Chto trebuet Komsomol ot Komsomoltsa (Moskva: Molodaia gvardiia, 1937), 68, 76Google Scholar

Fisher, Ralph Talcott, Pattern for Soviet Youth. A Study of the Congresses of the Komsomol, 1918–1954 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 181, 218Google Scholar

Orlova, Raisa, Vospominaniia o neproshedshem vremeni (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1983), 37Google Scholar

Molochko, Mikhail, Zhil-byl malchishka. Iz dnevnikov I pisem (Minsk: “Belarus,” 1965), 45, 115Google Scholar

Sharapov, Yurii, Litsei v Sokolnikakh (Moskva: “AIRO-XX,” 1995), 70, 167Google Scholar

Samoilov, David, Pamiatnye zapiski (Moskva: “Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia,” 1995), 127Google Scholar

Reese, Roger R., Red Commanders. A Social History of the Soviet Army Officer Corps, 1918–1991 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 138–9Google Scholar

Strachan, Hew, European Armies and the Conduct of War (London, Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1983), 150, 158–9Google Scholar

Samuelson, Lennart, Plans for Stalin's War Machine: Tukhachevskii and Military-Economic Planning, 1925–1941 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000)CrossRef Google Scholar

Simpkin, Richard E., Deep Battle: The Brainchild of Marshal Tukhachevskii (London; Washington: Brassey's Defence, 1987)Google Scholar

Ewing, E. Thomas, The Teachers of Stalinism. Policy, Practice, and Power in Soviet Schools of the 1930s (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), Chapters 1 and 2, especially 151–60Google Scholar

Gelman, Polina, O boiakh, pozharishchakh I druziakh-tovarishchakh… (Moskva: Izdatelstvo Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1995)Google Scholar

Kovalev, I. Ia., Komsomol I oborona Rodiny, 1921–1941 (Kiev: “Bishcha Shkola,” 1975), 91–3Google Scholar

Timofeeva-Egorova, Anna, Derzhis, sestrenka! (Moskva: Voenizdat, 1983), 21Google Scholar

Noggle, Anne, ed., A Dance with Death. Soviet Airwomen in World War II (College Station: Texas University Press, 1994), 95, 137

Stites, Richard, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (Cambridge, England; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar

Leyda, Jay, Kino. A History of the Russian and Soviet Film (New York: Collier Books, 1960), 314–18Google Scholar

Hicks, Jeremy, “The international reception of early Soviet sound cinema: Chapaev in Britain and America,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 25:2 (June 2005), 273–89CrossRef Google Scholar

Krylova, Anna, “The Personal and Individual in Soviet Prewar Literature and Society,” Giunter, Hans and Dobrenko, Evgeny, eds., Socialist Realist Anthology (St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 2000)Google Scholar

Raskova, M., Zapiski shturmana (Moskva: “Molodaia gvardiia,” 1939)Google Scholar

Lapin, B. and Khatsrevin, Z., “Znamenitaia letchitsa” in Zhenshchiny strany sotsialisma (Moskva: Politicheskaia literature, 1939), 14Google Scholar

Petrone, Karen, Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000)Google Scholar

Gribanov, S., “Liliia” in V nebe frontovom (Moskva: Molodaia gvardiia, 1971), 331Google Scholar

Book contents

1 - A Portrait of a Young Woman as the Citizen-Soldier

Summary

Access options

References

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive