The Soviet Union sustained unfathomable losses during the Second World War.
And although initially reluctant, by 1943, the military command allowed women to form
their own units.
Tens-of-thousands of women enlisted to fight off the Wehrmacht that had caused so much
death and destruction since their invasion.
Among these women was 20-year-old Roza Shanina.
Just two weeks after she first saw combat, she already received a recommendation for
the Soviet Order of Glory, awarded for valour and bravery.
And what is more, this 20-year-old girl kept a diary, a practice strictly forbidden by
the Soviet high command.
She would go on to kill 59 German soldiers, making her one of the greatest Soviet snipers
and launching her to celebrity status behind the frontlines.
That is, before meeting her grim end.
Roza’s story is one of incredible bravery, hardship and perseverance.
Of a young woman trying to maintain her place among the harsh Soviet front lines, where
friend and foe were sometimes impossible to distinguish due to her fellow soldiers’
behaviour.
Early Life
Roza was born on April 3 1924, in Edma, a tiny village several hundred kilometres to
the northeast of St. Petersburg in the Soviet Union.
Together with four older brothers, she was raised by her parents - a milkmaid, Anna,
and a logger and World War 1 veteran, Yegor.
When the revolution broke out, Yegor joined the Bolsheviks and became a director of the
local Bogdanovskoy commune.
After completing primary public school, Roza was deadset on completing her education.
But times were tough, and the closest secondary school was 10 kilometres away in the village
of Bereznik.
She was able to stay with her aunt Agnes, living in the city.
After school, she worked in the pigsty.
Other days she walked 20 kilometres back-and-forth to her home.
Not uncommon for the 1930s Soviet Union, but very telling about the conditions Roza grew
up in.
An adequate student and described as stubborn, when she was 14 she wanted to attend secondary
school and study literature.
Her parents forbade her to continue her schooling.
In protest, she ran away from home, walked over fifty hours through the taiga forest
to the nearby railway station.
From there, she travelled to the northern port city Arkhangelsk where her brother, Fyodor,
resided.
Not too soon after, the local secondary school admitted her.
Obtaining a sleeping place in the school’s dormitory and a modest stipend, she continued
her studies.
But in June 1941, when she was 17-years-old, the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union.
Because the initial stages of the war went horribly for the Soviet Union, and the invasion
unleashed the total war with every aspect of public life mobilised to contribute to
the war effort.
The economy was in shambles, famine and drafts were widespread, and there certainly was no
time for secondary education this close to the front.
Roza’s stipend was abolished leading to her being unable to follow any classes.
The war front gradually came closer to Arkhangelsk.
The port city was one of the main ports used as a logistical base for Allied Arctic convoys
to ship aid to the Soviet Union.
The Nazi’s frequently bombed the port city, and during one such raid in 1941, the bombs
killed Fyodor.
Another brother, Mikhail, passed away during the Siege of Leningrad in December 1941.
To cover her expenses, Roza worked at a kindergarten using her meagre income to take classes whenever
she was able to.
In 1942 Roza managed to graduate her secondary school with honours.
Having lost her brothers and seeing the absolute horrors the war brought to the Russian people,
she requested any military officer she came by if she could serve.
But every time they refused her, as women were not yet eligible to serve.
Although initially, women couldn’t serve in the Red Army, due to the shortage of men
and enormous casualties, by March 1943 the military command agreed to women enlisting.
Together with tens of thousands of other women, Roza joined the Red Army.
She first enrolled in the Vsevobutch basic military training, before joining the Central
Female Sniper Academy.
In April 1944, at the age of 20, she graduated with honours.
Her superiors acknowledged her as an incredibly skilled marksman and thanks to her surprisingly
detailed tactical analysis and situational awareness, the academy requested her to remain
at the military base to continue teaching new recruits.
The Unseen Terror of East Prussia
Instead, Roza insisted she wanted to fight.
Begrudgingly, her superiors named her commander of a small women’s sniper platoon, part
of the 184th Rifle Division.
The platoon travelled to the Belorussian front, to repel the retreating Germans.
The reason why we know quite a bit about Roza, even though the war was incredibly chaotic,
was because she kept a diary detailing her acts from October 1944 onwards.
The Soviet military command strictly forbade the keeping of diaries, and Roza’s is just
one of very few uncovered to the public.
She also wrote letters to the editor of the 5th Army newspaper Pyotr Molchanov.
He kept her diaries and letters for two decades.
In 1965, he published them, leading to Roza earning national and international recognition
for her exceptional life and contribution to the war.
At any rate, when Roza first saw combat in April 1944, the Red Army had pushed the Germans
back to more-or-less the western Ukrainian border.
In June that year, the Red Army launched the Bagration offensive.
This campaign shattered the German front line and by December that year, the Germans attempted
to tactically retreat through East Prussia and current-day Poland.
But Roza didn’t encounter the action she expected.
The military command ordered women’s units to remain in the rear, so they barely saw
combat.
Roza pleaded with her commander multiple times, although all her pleas fell to deaf ears.
In a letter to Pyotr, she describes how she went AWOL because she got bored waiting to
see action:
“I recently went AWOL.
Carelessly left the rear for a company at the front.
They did not look for me.
Good people have said that leaving from the rear to go to the front is not a crime.
And I know that our training company will not go on the offensive, and will stay behind.
I also need to be at the front, to see with my own eyes what it is, a real war.
And then, to look for the lead battalion?
All around the forests and swamps, staggered Germans.
It was a dangerous walk.
I went to the battalion, which was directed to the front, and on the same day fought in
the battle.
Beside me, people were dying.
I fired, and successfully.
And afterwards captured 3 … these fascists are strong.
I’m happy I went AWOL.
Although they reprimanded me.
I even got a punishment from the Komsomol1 – put on watch.”
As time progressed Roza became quite the adept sniper, often having run-ins with her superiors
because she went AWOL or simply did what she wanted, disregarding military protocol.
Still, there was no denying this girl was an incredible shot - racking up two dozen
confirmed kills in the first few weeks at the front.
In May 1944, only two weeks after she first saw combat, Roza became the first woman to
receive the Soviet Order of Glory for her brave conduct nearby the village of Kozyi
Gory.
Both friend and foe knew her for her ability for ‘double hits’ - shooting two enemy
combatants in rapid succession.
The Soviet press too began taking note of Roza’s skilled marksmanship.
Newspapers and pamphlets show she was quite the propaganda tool to motivate the Soviet
citizens and soldiers.
It is why nowadays, so many photographs of her exist.
One of her diary entries from November 1944 show even the kindergarten she worked at had
heard of her achievements:
“I received a letter from the preschools in Moscow and Arkhangelsk.
They were all proud of my achievements.
Yes, my portrait was in the “Humor” magazine on November 7th.
But I was too overrated.
I do only what is required of every Soviet soldier, and everyone.
I am famous everywhere; it’s a lot.”
Together with other women in her platoon, Roza considered her girlfriends, she became
a well-known name in the Soviet Union.
She also wrote about other members of her platoon:
“Always nice to have a girlfriend.
Sasha, I am with you, and sadness is sometimes fun.
I share with you all that is in my soul.
I brought Colonel Novozhilov my letter, in which I asked to be sent to the front and
criticized our officers.
Day before yesterday buried girlfriend-in-arms Sasha Koreneva.
2 more of our girlfriends were wounded: Lazarenko Valya and Shmeleva Zina.
Maybe you remember them?”
In October 1944 a Moscow pamphlet noted the ‘Red Army girl shot five Germans in one
day.’
By this time Roza became a minor celebrity: the unseen terror of East Prussia.
The military command recommended her for the Medal “for Courage” thanks to her actions
during a German counterattack in late October.
The official pamphlet recommending her literally notes she “has killed 59 Fritz”, meaning
German soldiers.
But the war was a brutal and deadly one.
Roza’s unit numbered 78, but by early 1945 only six women remained.
Unbeknownst to her, one of her brothers Sergei served as the head of an NKVD intelligence
unit.
Failing to carry out orders, he was arrested in September 1943 and initially sentenced
to hard labour.
This sentence was later overturned to execution, and he took his own life in February 1945.
“I haven’t figured out my future, but many options: 1) in the institute; 2) maybe,
if that doesn’t work out, then – social service, give myself fully to the education
of orphans, specialize in teaching preschool; 3) most likely, kill myself, when I learn
the fate of the country and some family and friends.
For the second, I’d still need to learn a few things, become qualified.
I haven’t really thought much about it, so far off.”
Over time Roza’s entries became grimmer.
As winter arrived she wrote how tank fumes hurt her eyes and lungs, how the weather froze
her and those around her and that she lived in a lucid state between life and death.
She detailed the assaults she faced from other soldiers and how one time a superior grabbed
her ‘as if he was in a brothel.’
Another time the son of a Soviet colonel drunkenly tried to assault her.
“I saw in a dream my brother Fyoder.
My heart is heavy, I’m 20 years old and do not have a close friend, why?
And lots of children, but my heart does not trust anyone.
I blame this scum that comes with army life, wrecking everything, not caring about a girl.
Went to reconnaissance in regiment 785.
Wonderful guys, well received, but started to get harassed by the head of the regiment,
chasing me when I had done nothing, grabbing at me like he was in a brothel.
I could not stand him, and left after only staying 2 days: it was impossible to live
there anymore, the harassment intensified.”
She wrote about the war, her loneliness, heartbreak and her hope for the future.
Although he occasionally found love, the war often tore them away from her.
“I remember Misha Panarin.
What a good guy.
Killed…
He loved me, I know, and I him.
Senior Sergeant, 2 years in the institute, educated, polite, humble, decent, nice guy.
I felt very sorry for him.
“
On January 14, Roza finally managed to be assigned frontline duty.
Her last diary entry is from January 24, just three days before she was killed.
It once again detailed the graphic assault by the son of her divisional commander, and
she closed the entry with the sentence:
“Again march at night, now dark, but soon dawn, sitting around the campfire and writing.
So bad, when no bosses need me.
Good, that nobody is giving orders, but still bad – no orders, what to do?
I can’t seem to find contentment in my heart.
I don’t need anyone.”
After merely 10 months at the front, Roza, just 20 years old, was killed.
On January 27, Roza met her lonely and grim end.
A grenade landed nearby her and blew her up.
Reports state two Red Army soldiers found her on top of the artillery commander.
In a final act of heroism, Roza threw herself on him to save him from the blast, which tore
open her entire upper body.
Roza became the first female military sniper to receive the Order of Glory.
In total, she achieved 59 confirmed kills making her one of the deadliest Soviet snipers
of the Second World War.
The Soviets buried her in Eastern Prussia with full military honours.
Her grave lies at the base of a pear tree on the bank of the Lyna River.
Three of her brothers died in the war as well, not to mention the countless women fighting
with her in the all-women sniper units.
Thanks to her diary entries and later-published letters to Pyotr, we know a lot about Roza,
her personality and the grim realities of the war for women at the Soviet front.
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