Military and Oral History Conference:
Between Memory and History
The Soviet Female Experience as Soldiers in World War II
Roger Reese, Texas A&M University
I propose to address the questions: was women’s experience of war qualitatively different for Soviet women from Soviet men’s; what were the general patterns of female-male relations, and did Soviet women experience war and relate their experience of war the same as men? I argue that women’s experience and memory of war ran parallel to men’s in many ways, but was different from that of men’s in some very specific gender-related aspects because of a gendered identity and appreciation that heretofore military service in general and warfare in particular were a male realm. Some of the similarities are obvious such as that they had to deal with fear of death and wounds like men, and the strains of separation from home and family. Both men and women suffered privations, but with women having gender specific issues separate from men. Women’s experience of World War II was particularly different in that to do their jobs they had to overcome male attitudes hostile to their presence. Furthermore, they had to deal with sexual harassment. For the female Soviet soldier, enemy number one was the German soldier, but all to often, enemy number two turned out to be the male Soviet soldier, the ones they fought alongside and tried to help. I also argue that the Soviet case proved that women are capable of serving in combat (and serving well), on a volunteer, self-selected basis. Finally, this paper attempts to demonstrate that from the oral record a female perspective on the combat-zone experience emerges that differs from the male, especially because while most men served exclusively in the company of other men completely absent the presence of women, but all women served in the company of men. This alone is enough to produce twos separate gender-affected experiences of war.