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Svetlana Alexeivich won the Nobel Prize for Literature<\/a> in 2015 for her \u201cdocumentary novels,\u201d which capture \u201cher polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our times.\u201d Her first, remarkable work, The Unwomanly Face of War<\/em>, appeared in 1985 and has recently come out in a new English translation<\/a>. This essay is a reflection on two chapters from it, namely \u201cGrow up girls\u2026 you\u2019re still green\u201d and \u201cI alone came back to mama.\u201d The book is composed of interviews with over 200 women who served as members of the Soviet Red Army during World War Two and stitched together in a symphony of voices that Alexievich calls \u201ca history of the soul.\u201d Growing up in postwar Belarus, Alexeivich realized that the narrative of war stories documented or advertised by the Soviet state were virtually all from a man\u2019s point of view. She sought to give impressions of women immersed in total war through the memories of these female soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The book provides raw perspectives on\nexperiences unique to women in the armed forces. Empirical data can\u2019t always\nprovide such personal information, and official accounts often ignore them. In\nthe Soviet Union over a million women served in what they call \u201cThe Great\nPatriotic War\u201d, with many in active combat positions. Alexievich\u2019s interviews\ndraw from a wide variety of roles fulfilled by women in the military. These\nincluded medical assistants, nurse aides, radio operators, foot soldiers, and\nanti-aircraft gunners, coming from all ranks- privates, sergeant majors,\nlieutenants, captains. When responding to the question: \u201cSo, in your opinion,\nwomen are out of place in war?\u201d one male veteran responded that Russian women\nthroughout history did not just wait at home for the war to be over and gave\nthe example of Princess Yaroslavna pouring melted pitch on the heads of the\nenemy in the twelfth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While women could be recruited, they were not subject to mandatory conscription as the men were. Yet as I have observed throughout my Political Science capstone course that covers the intersections of women and war, women often join the armed forces voluntarily and for the same reasons as men, in this instance- ideology, revenge, and justice. As anti-aircraft gunner Nonna noted, \u201cWe dreamed\u2026 we wanted to go to war\u201d and Sergeant Major Nina Yakovlevna similarly stated \u00a0\u201c<\/strong>We had been brought up on the romanticism of the revolution, on ideals,\u201d which instilled in them a drive to participate in wartime efforts to defeat fascism. Not only were the Nazis considered immoral, but the invading German army also killed millions of Soviet citizens and soldiers in 1941. This violence led many widowed, orphaned, or impacted women on a quest for vengeance by means of enlisting. Alexeivich\u2019s interviews reinforce how the motivation for joining truly could be the same in men and women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, not everyone understood\nthis motivation. After the war, other women would often look down upon female\nsoldiers. One interviewee shared that his wife thinks women joined the army to\nfind husbands and that they all had love affairs, even though her husband\ndescribes them as being \u201chonest girls\u201d. Regardless of how \u201chonest\u201d they were,\neven male soldiers had a somewhat negative disposition towards their female\ncounterparts. When asked if there was love during the war, a male veteran\nanswered, \u201cI met many pretty girls at the front, but we didn\u2019t look at them as\nwomen\u201d. All the dirt, lice, death, and ugly nature of the war seemed to corrupt\nthese women in the eyes of male soldiers, who \u201cwanted something beautiful\u201d.\nObviously, this opinion is problematic on a number of levels. They were still\nseen as caretakers, but their sexuality and fertility had been stripped from\ntheir identity in the eyes of these men. These women were the ones who saved\nthem, took care of them, and whom they called little sisters. This male\ninterviewee\u2019s statement about viewing female soldiers as sisters also has\nlarger implications for the discourse of women in the armed forces. It combats\nthe idea that the presence of mixed genders will harm group cohesion and\ninsists that women are not simply \u201cdistractions\u201d. At the same time, I wonder if\nthis familial role of sisters has anything to do with men not wanting to be\nvulnerable around their wife and wanting to present as the strong one helping\nothers, not needing help. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The interview with Nina Yakovlevna, who\nwas a Medical Assistant of a Tank Battalion, portrays the dangers women face in\nwar, even if they are not the ones firing a weapon. Nina, standing only 5 feet\n3 inches tall, took great offense that only big, strong, and sturdy girls were\nchosen to be tank medics, but still managed to force her way into the position.\nIronically, out of the five tank girls in her unit, the other 4 died, and only\nNina survived even though her size meant her comrades thought she would go\nfirst. This instance recalls the widespread\nnotion that women decrease military efficacy and reinforced the idea that women\nhad to fit male physical descriptions or desirable attributes, though Nina\nproved them wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alexievich\u2019s interviews also show readers\nhow male and female soldiers view the enemy and recall the war. Nina recounted\na visit with her friend Vanya, left blind by the war, who regrets only one\nthing- not being able to destroy just one more German tank. This conversation\nreveals a juxtaposition between the way some women recall the horrors and\nsuffering of the war and the way some men, even after the fact, still view the\nwar in the context of their duty as soldiers tasked with destroying the enemy.\nBy contrast, anti-aircraft gunner Vera Borisovna laments how dead people whom\nshe has killed haunt her in her sleep. And in a similar capacity, Private\nNatalya Ivanova, a nurse-aide, shared her experience of breaking off a piece of\nbread for a young captive German soldier in the dead winter and reflects that\nshe was happy she wasn\u2019t able to hate. Based on the context, it\u2019s clear that\nthe feminization, degradation and destruction of the enemy, which are ingrained\nin militarized masculinity, did not resonate with most women soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The concept of the modal man also plagued\nthe Soviet Army, especially when it came to uniforms. Man as the modal worker\nis essentially the idea that men are the \u201cdefault\u201d category in organizational\nstructures and that the male body with his male social relations is most\ndesirable for a job; therefore, conditions surrounding the task\u2019s completion\nwill be catered to his form. Any deviation is seen as an accommodation and as a\ngreat inconvenience. Two women, Nonna and Sofia, mention the military\u2019s lack of\nuniforms for women in their interviews. Nonna, like all women soldiers, wore\nmen\u2019s clothes as undergarments and oversized boots until her feet were entirely\nbloodied and Sofia says that knitted cotton underwear instead of men\u2019s shirts\ndidn\u2019t arrive until the end of the war. And somewhat surprisingly, foot soldier\nLola Akhmetova remarks that the worst part of the whole war was having to wear\nmen’s underwear. Several women in the interviews describe themselves as curious\ngirls going to great lengths and breaking rules in order to obtain certain\npositions in the war or at the front. Women only made up 3% of the entire\nmilitary force, so it is hard to imagine that the cost of outfitting them\nproperly would have been too great to undertake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Soviet Union never included the production\nof any feminine hygiene products in their central planning, for female soldiers\nand noncombatants alike. I find it shocking that a nation priding itself on\ntheir tenant of gender equality only accounted for men\u2019s needs in terms of\nplanning and production. Scholars also cite positive publicity as a reason for\na military\u2019s inclusion of women. While World War II necessitated the Red Army\nto include women out of need for manpower, I do think they also benefited from\nthis position as it was in line with their official ideology, where Marxism\nadvocated for gender equality and the role of women in the workforce. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Originally written in the 1980s, many of the stories in The Unwomanly Face of War <\/em>had never been spoken publically because of lingering trauma, the requests of husbands or loved ones, or because of social stigma. These women soldiers–having risked their life for their country–were generally looked down upon as promiscuous by other women or as unsuitable for marriage by men. But Alexeivich worried that this history of women\u2019s participation in the deadliest conflict would be lost by selective history. The Unwomanly Face of War<\/em> amplifies the voices of female soldiers and gives us an invaluable perspective on their wartime experiences. Ultimately, it\u2019s important to see how these women view themselves as soldiers.\u00a0 Nina Yakovlevna\u2019s poem perfectly captures this topic. Her first lines read: \u201cA brave girl leaps onto the armor plating. And she defends her Motherland. She\u2019s not afraid of bullets or shells-\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Nancy Pellegrino is a senior majoring in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and Political Science. This essay is part of her ongoing capstone research project. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Nancy Pellegrino Svetlana Alexeivich won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015 for her \u201cdocumentary novels,\u201d which capture \u201cher polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our times.\u201d Her first, remarkable work, The Unwomanly Face of War, … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/havighurst\/files\/2021\/04\/pellegrino_alexievich.jpg\")
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