When Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941,
the largest invasion in history, many Soviet women volunteered to defend their homeland.
They were initially turned away, but as Soviet casualties piled up, Stalin decided to accept
women into the Red Army simply because he needed all the soldiers he could get.
Some 800,000 women served in the Red Army throughout the war.
Two hundred thousand of those women became decorated soldiers,
and 89 were awarded the highest honor the Soviet Union granted: the Hero of the Soviet Union.
Some of the women to receive this award were snipers and some of the most successful in
the entire war. One was even deemed the fifth deadliest sniper in history.
In this video, we’re going to shed some light on
the incredibly badass female snipers of the Soviet Union.
The Red Army deployed over 2,000 female snipers during a four-year period. Only 500
or so survived the war, but some live on forever in the history books. To put it in perspective,
the Red Army's female snipers racked up a combined kill count of approximately 11,000.
The Central Women’s School of Sniper Training was founded in March 1942 and recruited women
between ages 18 and 26 who were physically fit and had at least seven years of education.
The majority of female Soviet snipers were trained at this school.
The Soviets believed women would make good snipers because they could withstand cold
and stress better than their male counterparts. They also believed that women were more patient,
which meant they would wait to land that perfect shot.
After graduating from the school, these snipers were assigned to different units
and sent to some of the most dangerous battlegrounds in the Soviet Union.
Many of them displayed excellence, but here are four of the most celebrated snipers.
Natalya Kovshova and Mariya Polivanova were best friends and talented snipers.
Born in 1920 and 1922, respectively, the pair met as students at a research institute
in Moscow. After the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Kovshova, the older
and more battle-ready of the two, joined the People’s Militia, an unofficial military group.
Once women were allowed to enlist in the Red Army, she began training as a sniper
with the 528th Rifle Regiment, with Polivanova joining her shortly after.
In January 1942, the pair completed training and were assigned to the same unit,
the 528th Rifle Regiment, where they both earned the respect of their commanders for their skills.
They were the resident sniper duo of the regiment,
with Kovshova serving as the shooter, and Polivanova the spotter.
Kovshova’s skill as a sharpshooter earned her the job of teaching new soldiers how
to use rifles. The best of her students she took aside, teaching them how to be snipers.
Kovshova and Polivanova were sent on a number of missions on the Northwestern Front,
but their last and most famous one came in August 1942, when they were sent to
Sutoki-Byakovo in the Novgorod Oblast to drive Germans out of a village.
Unfortunately for the Soviets, luck was on the Germans’ side on the day of the battle,
and the Soviet casualties quickly piled up. When the commander of the unit was killed,
Kovosha took over and gave the order to open fire. When the Germans realized they
were being attacked by snipers, they answered with a shower of mortar fire.
The situation was truly hopeless for the Soviets. So much so that one soldier asked Kovshova if
they could retreat, to which she replied, “Not one step back!”, Stalin’s slogan at the time.
In the end, only Kovshova and Poliva were still breathing.
Injured, out of ammo, and surrounded by Germans, they made their last stand. They each pulled
a pin from a grenade, reportedly kissed, and blew themselves up along with some surrounding
Germans. They were posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union the following year.
In June 1942, 18-year-old kindergarten teacher Roza Shanina joined the Red Army as a sniper after
her brother was slain in Leningrad. She enrolled in the Central Women’s Sniper Training School,
from which she graduated with honors in 1944. She was praised for her ability to shoot doublets,
which is when you hit two targets with two rounds in very quick succession. Her instructors
asked if she would stay on and teach, but she refused, instead answering the call of duty.
That call eventually landed her in the 184th Rifle Division, which had a separate female sniper
platoon. Due to her talent as a sharpshooter, Shanina was appointed as one of the platoon’s
commanders as soon as she arrived. On the 5th of April 1944, just three days after she’d joined the
platoon, Shanina iced her first German soldier. According to an anonymous author, after she fired
the fatal shot, she slid down into her trench in disbelief and said, “I’ve killed a man.”
Clearly, it didn’t take Shanina very long to come to terms with her actions because,
between the 6th and the 11th of that same month, she dropped a further 13 enemy soldiers while
subjected to heavy artillery fire during the battle for the village of Kozyi Gory. Her bravery
in this battle earned her first military decoration: the Order of Glory, 3rd class.
In June of the same year, as the Soviet Union was launching its offensive Operation Bagration,
the decision was made to pull all female snipers from the front lines. This was because it was
Soviet policy to spare snipers, they didn’t want to lose all of their sharpshooters in
one operation. Shanina was not happy about being removed from the action and requested
to be sent to the front lines anyway, going so far as to write to Stalin directly, twice.
Despite her efforts, she was refused. Pissed off, she decided to go anyway.
This earned her a sanction, but she was never court-martialed, so she carried on fighting.
During Operation Bagration, she was part of a group tasked with eliminating encircled
German soldiers. During one sub-operation, her efforts contributed to the recapture of
Vitebsk. Come July, Shanina was again joined by her sisters in arms en route to Vilnius
to drive out the Germans. In that battle alone, she racked up 12 confirmed kills.
By the end of August, just five months after she’d come out of training,
Shanina’s confirmed kill count reached 42. That month, she was serving under
the first Soviet division to enter East Prussia. In a single day of war,
she managed to kill five enemy soldiers on their own soil from the safety of a sniper’s nest, much
to the amazement of some Canadian journalists who branded her “The unseen terror of East Prussia.”
In October, Shanina became one of the first female snipers to receive the Medal
for Courage. But unfortunately, Shanina didn’t live long into the following year.
In January 1945, while stationed in East Prussia, Shanina knew the end was approaching.
With 72 of 78 soldiers in her battalion killed,
she wrote in her diary about how she may also soon be dead. In her last ever diary entry,
she wrote about how she and her remaining comrades were hiding out in tanks after
the German fire became too intense. The day after this entry, a shell fragment tore open her chest.
She was taken to a Soviet hospital, but there was nothing they could do. One nurse recalled
Shanina saying that her only regret was that she had done so little. She passed away soon after.
In total, after less than a year of fighting, her confirmed kill count
was 59. Her diary was published in 1965, solidifying her place in Soviet history and
reviving the Soviet people’s appreciation for her incredible bravery and skill.
Known also as Lady Death, Lyudmila Pavlichenko remains the most successful female sniper in
history and the fifth most successful overall. Born just outside of what is now Kyiv, Ukraine,
in 1916, Pavlichenko was a self-described competitive tomboy who took up shooting
long before World War II, earning a certificate for marksmanship as a teenager.
At just 16, she married and gave birth to her first and only child. Her marriage soon crumbled,
however, and she moved back in with her parents. During that time, she got a job
as a grinder at the Kyiv Arsenal Factory. In 1937, Pavlichenko enrolled at Kyiv University,
where she studied history in the hopes of becoming a teacher. During her final year of studies,
Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and Pavlichenko didn’t hesitate to drop everything and join the
fight. In fact, she was one of the first people to volunteer at the Odesa recruiting office.
While she specifically requested to serve in the infantry, the registrar pushed her to serve as a
nurse. Pavlichenko said absolutely not, and once the registrar saw that she had experience as a
markswoman, she was permitted to join the Red Army as a sniper, assigned to the 25th Rifle Division.
As one of the first women in the Red Army, her male comrades didn’t accept
her immediately. That changed on the 8th of August 1941, however,
when she smoked two enemy soldiers with a rifle handed to her by a fallen comrade.
For the following two and a half months,
Pavlichenko fought in the Siege of Odesa and racked up a ridiculous 187 confirmed kills.
After her hundredth kill, she was promoted to the rank of senior sergeant.
In October 1941, Pavlichenko and her unit were sent to Crimea, where they fought in
the Siege of Sevastopol. During this time, she was tasked with training fresh snipers,
who collectively killed 100 enemy soldiers. By May 1942,
Pavlichenko was promoted to lieutenant, at which point she had 257 confirmed kills under her belt.
In June 1942, she took mortar shrapnel to the face, an injury which ended her sharpshooting
career. Her final kill count was 309. This figure includes 36 enemy snipers.
Pavlichenko spent the rest of the war working
as a propagandist for the Red Army and training new snipers.
As part of her work as a propagandist, Pavlichenko was sent on a tour of Great Britain, Canada,
and the United States in 1942. Her task was to rally support from the Western Allies and
encourage them to open a second front against the Germans. FDR welcomed Pavlichenko at the
White House, making her the first Soviet citizen to be received by a US president.
First Lady Elanor Roosevelt also took Pavlichenko on a tour of the US,
during which time the press didn’t take her all that seriously. She was referred
to as the “Girl Sniper,” and the male reporters made comments about her uniform,
saying that the skirt was too long and made her look fat. They also asked her stupid questions,
like if she wore makeup on the front lines. Eventually, Pavlichenko became fed up and
told the press, “Gentlemen, I am 25 years old, and I have killed 309 fascist occupants by now.
Don’t you think that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?”.
But what do you think about these badass female snipers? Are there any highly
successful snipers that we missed? Why don’t you think they aren’t talked about that much?
Do they deserve a bigger spotlight? Let us know what you think in the comments below.