Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front

by Anna Krylova

• ISBN13: 9780521197342
• ISBN10: 0521197341
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-03-15
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Soviet Women in Combat explores the unprecedented historical phenomenon of Soviet young women's en masse volunteering for World War II combat in 1941 and writes it into the twentieth-century history of women, war, and violence. The book narrates a story about a cohort of Soviet young women who came to think about themselves as "women soldiers" in Stalinist Russia in the 1930s and who shared modern combat, its machines, and commanding positions with men on the Eastern front between 1941 and 1945. The author asks how a largely patriarchal society with traditional gender values such as Stalinist Russia in the 1930s managed to merge notions of violence and womanhood into a first conceivable and then realizable agenda for the cohort of young female volunteers and for its armed forces. Pursuing the question, Krylova's approach and research reveals a more complex conception of gender identities.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. x
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction: The Woman Veteran as a World War II Memoirist	p. 1
Theoretical and Interpretive Challenges of the “Generation Not from This Universe”	p. 12
Paradoxes of Stalinist Culture and Subjectivity: The “Woman Soldier” as a Personal and State Project	p. 20
The “Woman Soldier” in Mechanized Warfare of World War II	p. 27
Before The Front, 1930S
A Portrait of a Young Woman as the Citizen-Soldier	p. 35
Introduction: “My Fascist, as a Result, Remained Alive. And That Was Very Upsetting”	p. 35
“We Were the Prewar Generation”: Military and Generational Contours of Future Struggles	p. 38
Imperatives and Opportunities for New Gender Identities: A Young Soviet Woman in School and at the Shooting Range	p. 49
Shifting Gender Lines of Future Battlefields in Press, Literature, and Film	p. 60
Gender Ambiguities on the Eve of the War: Can Mothers by Civic Duty Be Women Soldiers by Birth?	p. 70
On The Way to the Front, 1941-45
“And This Is Exactly Who We Are-Soldiers!”: Women Volunteers, Local Authorities, and the Stalinist Government in 1941	p. 87
Introduction: “The Pressing Inner Voice That Repeated Over and Over Again: 'To the Front'”	p. 87
Young Women Volunteers in 1941 Conscription Sites	p. 89
The “Desire to Fight” in Stalinist Official Culture: Gender Contradictions at Their Extremes	p. 101
Discouragement without Prohibition: Soviet Leadership and the En Masse Female Volunteering	p. 110
The Exceptional Mobilization of 1941: The Making of a Female Combat Collective by State Order	p. 121
Introduction: “So Different in Their Personal Lives and So Similar in the Main Thing-[a] Desire to Fight…”	p. 121
Reading Order 0099	p. 124
“Can You Fight, Young Woman?”: Different Gender Languages of the State Mobilization	p. 128
“Justifying and Proving”: The Making of Women's Combat Collectives	p. 136
New Gender Landscapes for the Army: From Grassroots Enlistments to the State-Run Mobilizations of 1942-45	p. 144
Introduction: “We Are Talking Not about Individual Female Volunteers but about Thousands…”	p. 144
Parting with “Bourgeois Contemplations” about War: Female Mobilizations in and outside of the National Press	p. 146
By State Order; Old and New Gender Landscapes for the Military	p. 149
The “Woman Soldier” as a State Category of Mobilization	p. 156
At The Front, 1941-45
Partners in Violence: The Woman Soldier and the Machine in the 1941 Trenches	p. 173
Introduction: “I Believe in My Maximchik…”	p. 173
Where Did Our Planes Go?	p. 176
Different Concepts of the Woman and the Proliferation of Gender Logics	p. 183
Combat Violence and the Dynamics of Gender	p. 194
“To Be a Woman Commander-That Was Great!”: Remechanizing and Regendering in the Red Army, 1942-45	p. 204
Introduction: “To Be a Woman Commander-That Was Great!”	p. 204
Remechanizing the Soviet Military: “The Russian Colossus on Steel Feet”	p. 206
“Fighting” in the Literal Sense of the Word: Possibilities and Limitations in Wartime Representation of the Woman Soldier	p. 217
“Only Commanders” and “Only at the Frontline”: The Uncompromising Young Woman Soldier	p. 229
Bonded by Combat: Women and Men Sharing Violence, Authority, and Romance in Mechanized Warfare, 1942-45	p. 236
Introduction: “I Love My Soldiers”: Comradely Bonding and Alternative Cultures of Combat Violence	p. 236
A Male Soldier as a Spectator, Record Keeper, and Participant in Young Women's Historic “Showing-Off”	p. 239
Anxiety and Pleasures of “Being First Women in Combat”: Combat Violence and Intimate Laboratories of Mechanized Warfare	p. 247
Narratives from Male Recollections: Contemplating “Motherly” and “Fatherly” Military Traditions	p. 256
Finishing Details to the Portrait of the Woman as a Modern Soldier: Factoring in the “Womanly,” and the Romantic, and the Heterosexual	p. 269
Conclusion	p. 290
Appendix	p. 299
Bibliography	p. 303
Index	p. 315
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.