The Myth of the Woman Warrior and World War Ii in Soviet Culture

THE MYTH OF THE WOMAN WARRIOR AND WORLD WAR II IN SOVIET CULTURE By Adrienne Marie Harris M.A., University of Kansas, 2001 Submitted to the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Kansas In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ______________________________ Edith W. Clowes, chair ______________________________ Maria Carlson ______________________________ William J. Comer ______________________________ Ann E. Cudd ______________________________ Eve Levin Date defended: April 25, 2008 Copyright 2008 Adrienne M. Harris The Dissertation Committee for Adrienne Maris Harris certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: THE MYTH OF THE WOMAN WARRIOR AND WORLD WAR II IN SOVIET CULTURE ______________________________ Edith W. Clowes, chair ______________________________ Maria Carlson ______________________________ William J. Comer ______________________________ Ann E. Cudd ______________________________ Eve Levin Date approved: April 30, 2008 2 Abstract ―The Myth of the Woman Warrior and World War II in Soviet Culture‖ defines, analyzes, and explains the figure of the Soviet ―woman warrior‖ who participated in World War II, asking the questions: what is the nature of the woman warrior in works about World War II and what does her portrayal tell us about Soviet culture and memory? Although the woman warrior has deep roots in Russian culture, this topic has received almost no attention from a cultural perspective. After a discussion of the 1930s militarization, this study turns to works depicting women who participated in WWII and argues that these depictions fall into three types based on deep archetypes: the martyr, handmaiden, and the ―polianitsa,‖ or knight. This dissertation elucidates essentialist and constructivist intersections by investigating why certain images of women motivated Soviet citizens during the war and then became powerful myths that shaped national consciousness. 3 Acknowledgements This study was funded by a Title VIII Research Fellowship (administered by the American Council for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS), FLAS fellowships, a Truman Foundation Good Neighbor Scholarship, and a grant from the University of Kansas Graduate School. The author would also like to express her gratitude to Madison and Lila Self and the University of Kansas Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures for years of generous support. On Translation and Transliteration Unless otherwise noted, the translations are the author‘s. This dissertation uses Library of Congress transcription, except in cases in which the name is widely recognized in another system, for example, Tolstoy. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction..................................................................................................................6 Chapter 1: ‗И Я Хочу Стать Летчицей‘: Soviet Women and the Militarization of the 1930s.........................................................................................................29 Chapter 2: Молчать, как Партизанка: The Woman Warrior-Martyr…………….69 Chapter 3: The Gendered Gaze: Disarming the Woman Warrior............................143 Chapter 4: Пишущие Поляницы: Women Warriors and Their Epic Battle for Soviet Cultural Memory.............................................214 Conclusion................................................................................................................270 Appendix..................................................................................................................279 Bibliography.............................................................................................................303 5 Introduction И [Зина Радина] никогда не забудет, какой ценой нам досталась светлая жизнь, не забудет своей прекрасной боевой юности. Я видела, как она рассказывала сыну о войне: Серьезно и настороженно, словно прислушиваясь к далекому-далекому грому. Наверное, все мы, бывшие фронтовики, так вспоминаем свою юность, прошедшую в огне Великой отечественной войны.1 (And [Zina Radina] will never forget at what cost we came into possession of our bright life, will never forget her beautiful military youth. I saw how she told her son about the war. Seriously and warily, as though listening to the distant thunder of battle. Surely, that is how all of us former frontline soldiers remember our youth, the youth that passed in the firе of the Great Patriotic War.) With this excerpt, we glimpse a woman veteran‘s effort to convey her experience as a fighter pilot in World War II to a younger person. Hero of the Soviet Union Marina Chechneva captures Zina Radina‘s pride in her military service. Years after the war, Radina still hears the thunder of battle and she describes the youth she spent at war as ―splendid.‖ This dissertation examines the figure of the Soviet woman warrior of World War II, as represented by writers, artists, filmmakers, and the women veterans themselves as makers of cultural memory. Its goal is to imprint upon the reader how thoroughly these myths have penetrated Soviet culture. ―The Myth of the Woman Warrior and World War II in Soviet Culture‖ addresses one of the less appreciated aspects of Russian culture as a whole: the perception of women at war. Most Russians who acknowledge women‘s participation in the war assume that, like much else, women who fought were simply following state policy and were motivated by a sense of patriotic duty. This 1 Марина Чечнева, Боевые подруги мои (Москва: ДОСААФ, 1975), 430. 6 dissertation shows that there was a considerable dialogue between the state and its citizens across many cultural forms about women‘s motivations to fight. It examines the place of the archetype of the fighting woman in the war and Soviet culture in general. This study asks broad questions about the construction of gender, women‘s agency, and the fight over a nation‘s cultural memory. It investigates how women who fought in World War II are represented in texts, official and unofficial, public and private. This dissertation employs the term ―woman warrior‖ popularized in the title of Maxine Hong Kingston‘s 1976 novel. In many cultures, the woman warrior is a deep-seated cultural pattern or archetype. She is a strong, courageous leader. Unlike the word ―Amazon,‖ the woman warrior does not exist in a historical moment or a physical location. Her presence across cultures and through the centuries shows that she is one of the basic patterns in the human psyche. In Soviet culture, a woman warrior manifests herself as a soldier who participates in a combat situation either as a uniformed member of the armed services on the front or a woman waging war in the underground as a partisan. The mother remains by far the dominant female archetype in Russian culture. In contrast to Western cultures, where until recently women have debated taking up arms rather than actually doing it, the Russians have a long tradition of women going onto the battlefield and fighting alongside male soldiers. The acceptance of women in combat has waxed and waned throughout the ages, but during the militarization campaigns of the 1930s, the media bombarded women and girls with images that 7 encouraged them to prepare for an impeding war by learning how to handle weaponry, fly planes, nurse wounded, and conduct chemical warfare. These militarized women were hailed as ―patriotic daughters of the Motherland‖ in popular magazines, and upon the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union June 22, 1941 many of them became snipers, pilots, doctors, nurses, medics, radio operators, and translators. Shortly after the beginning of the war, keepers of cultural memory— journalists, poets, fiction-writers—began writing about women soldiers. Some developed into vastly popular myths that shaped national consciousness and, indeed, continue to be recognized and embraced even after the end of the Soviet Union. Other female soldiers were forgotten shortly after the war. Why should this heroization of some and forgetting of others be the case? In this period, images of women warriors fall into three types based on deep cultural archetypes: the martyr, the handmaiden, and the knight (polianitsa). The Soviet woman warrior, of course, existed in the mass culture of a totalitarian regime and her image was strongly shaped by those in power. During the Stalinist period, in particular, there was little space for alternate voices. Against expectations, however, this dissertation finds that the portrayal of women warriors depends very much upon who is speaking, photographing, or painting and when he or she created the work. Why did women wage war on such a grand scale during the Soviet period, and what does the figure of the woman in combat mean in Soviet culture? Although there is little discourse related to women in combat, Soviet women inherited a deep tradition of women fighting on the battlefield. In July 1926, Commissar for Military 8 Affairs Kliment Voroshilov and Chief of Staff Mikhail Tukhachevskii determined in July, 1926 that the Red Army was unprepared for war.2 In response, the Soviet Union began the militarization campaign that led to the arming of hundreds of thousands of women. Prior militarization, Russian women had already long proven that they were suited for combat. This history, combined with propaganda and a state policy of preparing all citizens for war, set the stage for the mass entry of women into the military. This dissertation studies the manipulation

Load more