How a Soviet girl sniper became a friend of the American president's wife: Lyudmila Pavlichenko

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

She admired. Either beauty, or the danger that came from her. Indeed, the fame of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a Soviet girl sniper, spread far beyond the country. On account of her more than 300 destroyed enemies, including the officers and those on whom the real hunt was carried out. The image of the "beauty Komsomol", who demonstrated strength and courage at the front, was idealized in the Soviet press. All ambiguous moments, blunders or mistakes were deleted from her biography, making her a model of a Soviet woman soldier. But was everything really that smooth?

Modern historians believe that Lyudmila's achievements are exaggeratedly exaggerated in the typical Soviet manner. The very fact that fragile girls are fighting for the Motherland on the front line, on a par with men, could not help but admire. Female images appeared frequently in the Soviet military press. As an example of someone worth looking up to.

During the Great Patriotic War, more than two thousand women were trained in sniper courses. All of them subsequently went to the front. They were not afraid of either death or frontline hardships, they strove to contribute to the Victory. Lyudmila Pavlichenko was recognized as the most productive of them, based on the number of killed Fritzes. However, if there were no war in her fate, perhaps an ordinary Ukrainian girl would not have had to show heroism.

Childhood and adolescence of Lyudmila Pavlichenko

Lyudmila was born into a working class family in 1916, her father was an ordinary locksmith Mikhail Belov. Despite the speaking surname, during the Civil War, he actively supported the Bolsheviks. And so much so that he was able to achieve an excellent military career, becoming a regimental commissar. After the war, he remained with his shoulder straps, getting a job in the internal affairs bodies. This largely determined the fate of his daughter.

In the 30s, the family moved to Kiev, where Lyudmila, already in high school, got a job as a grinder at the plant. In order to combine work and study, she has to go to the evening department. The father insisted on work, so he wanted to smooth out the roughness in his daughter's biography, because her mother had noble roots. Given the situation in the country, this could have played to her detriment.

A hardworking and disciplined girl was able to make a career at the factory, having come as a handyman, later she became a turner, and then prepared drawings. At that time, it was fashionable among young people to receive additional specialties, often military ones. Everyone went to aviation sports, dreamed of jumping with a parachute. Lyudmila was afraid of heights, so she chose shooting.

In the very first shooting lesson, the girl hit the target straight. This success inspired her and she began to engage in shooting with enthusiasm. Standards have always come easily to her.

In the early 30s, she met her future husband. The romance, which started at dancing, developed extremely rapidly. Very soon they formalized the relationship. The couple had a son. But there was no understanding in the family, and soon the couple parted, and Lyudmila moved back to her parents with her son. The surname left her ex-husband. It is under her that she will become known throughout the world.

She enters the history department of a local university, but does not give up shooting classes. Life goes on as usual, the girl gets an education, works, is engaged in shooting and brings up her son. With friends, they often visited shooting galleries, where the girl always impressed with her accuracy. She was even advised to go to sniper school.

When the war began …

Despite the fact that Lyudmila undoubtedly liked the shooting, she was in no hurry to leave the history department and leave in a military direction. She wrote her thesis in Odessa, where she was engaged in historical research at a local museum. The son stayed with his parents. It was at that moment that it became known that Nazi Germany attacked the USSR.

The girl, who had sniper training courses in her arsenal, boldly went to the military registration and enlistment office, as soon as she heard on the radio about the beginning of the war. But in the military registration and enlistment office, without even looking at her, they said that doctors had not yet been called up. But her arguments that she was not a medic, but a sniper, did not inspire anyone. But a few days later, an order was issued on the need to call up the graduates of sniper circles. It was then that Lyudmila was needed.

The front already needed snipers, the girl got into the 25th Chapaev Infantry Division. Once Lyudmila carefully kept the badge about the end of sniper courses, dreaming of how to apply her knowledge and skills in practice. And here she is at the front. Only without a rifle.

The recruits weren't supposed to have weapons, they just didn't have enough. But one day, right in front of the girl, a soldier was killed, she took his rifle. Since then, she began to demonstrate her accuracy, which earned her the right to a sniper rifle. Each company had two snipers.

The enemy troops were approaching Odessa and already in the first days of defense Pavlichenko showed what she was capable of. In just 15 minutes of the mission, she destroyed 16 Fritzes, in the second mission, ten Germans died, including two officers.

Foreign journalists often asked Lyudmila how she, a young mother and a woman, manages to be so cold-blooded? After all, the number of deaths on her account only increased day by day. Lyudmila answered simply. From the moment when a comrade who was sympathetic to her was killed in front of her eyes, she flared with even greater hatred for the enemy. Foreign newspapers called her "Lady Death".

Lyudmila took part in the defense of Odessa, Sevastopol, fought on the territory of Moldova. During the defense of Odessa alone, Pavlichenko chalked up almost 200 enemy soldiers.

By the fall of 1941, it became clear that it was pointless to defend Odessa further. The military was evacuated. About 90 thousand soldiers were redirected to Sevastopol, part of the civilian population, ammunition and food were sent there. The 25th division was removed from Odessa at the very end, but at the same time managed to take part in repelling the first assault on Sevastopol. Successful reflection. Already near Sevastopol, Lyudmila brought her score to 309. It is noteworthy that among them there were about 40 enemy snipers who actively took part in the battle near the city. Paired with Lyudmila was Leonid Kitsienko, they met him on a combat mission - he was also a sniper. A relationship began between them, but they were not destined to be together for a long time. In the spring of 1942, Kitsienko was seriously wounded, he was touched by a shrapnel, his arm was torn off, and soon Aleksey died.

Pavlichenko was very upset by the death of a loved one, and in the summer of the same year she was wounded herself. But it so happened that it was this injury that saved her life. The wounded sniper was taken from the city to the Caucasus with many other wounded. The last German assault broke the Soviet defenses and the enemy captured the artillery positions. Only a few surviving groups of fighters continued to offer desperate resistance.

The 25th division, to which Lyudmila belonged, ceased to exist altogether. From Sevastopol, only a part of the fighters were evacuated, and then the upper and middle command personnel, and tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers were captured by the Nazis. Lyudmila could well have been among them or among the thousands of dead soldiers.

As part of the Soviet delegation

Lyudmila was treated in the Caucasus for a long time, and then she was summoned to Moscow to the political department of the Red Army. At that time, it had already been decided in Moscow that Lyudmila was a famous All-Union hero, whose name should be immortalized. She has already been included in the composition of the delegates who will have to travel to foreign countries. The main task of the delegates was to represent the USSR in the West, they also had to tell about the state of affairs at the front, about the difficulties and successes of the Soviet Union in the fight against the enemy. Considering how sensitive the USSR was to the opinion of the West about the country of the Soviets, one can only guess how careful and scrupulous the selection of candidates was.

The delegates had to meet not only with the media, but also with the public and politicians. Therefore, the selection of delegates was carried out in the most careful way, because the whole world looked at them and would correlate their images with Soviet society. It was the delegates, selected from among the fighters, who had to tell about all the horrors that occur at the front and the fault of which is fascism.

Pavlichenko, it is worth noting, did an excellent job with this role. She, young, beautiful and confident in her abilities, an eminent sniper, confidently held herself at all meetings. In America, she uttered a phrase that will go down in history. Say, she is 25 years old and she destroyed 309 fascists, and does it seem to the gathered gentlemen that they have been hiding behind her for too long? This phrase from the lips of a young and attractive girl made a splash. At first, everyone fell silent, and then burst into applause.

After this trip and her legendary phrase, Pavlichenko became famous not only in the country of the Soviets, but in the world as a whole. The Western press called her in different ways, inventing epithets one more trenchant than the other. But the main thing is that the main goal of the trip was achieved - the Americans began to look differently at military operations, and became convinced that fascism must be exterminated.

It was during this trip that Lyudmila made a very unusual acquaintance. She already knew English well and got into conversation with the president's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. The women liked each other so much that Pavlichenko even stayed with them in the White House. They kept warm friendly relations even when they were separated by the Iron Curtain and they lived in countries with ideological strife. Later, when Eleanor was on a visit to Moscow, they were able to see each other.

Created image or genuine heroism

Today, when it is customary to question any historical fact, it has been repeatedly doubted that Pavlichenko was able to exterminate such a number of invaders. At the beginning of the war, soldiers were presented for awards and much less achievements. And Lyudmila received her first award only in 1942 "For Military Merit". After being wounded, she received the Order of Lenin, in 1943 she became a Hero of the Soviet Union. The rest of the snipers received similar titles for a much smaller number of destroyed enemies.

Some historians are inclined to believe that Pavlichenko, an attractive girl and Stalin's favorite, did not deserve such awards, not to mention the historical memory of such a scale. Others are sure that Pavlichenko, after an unsuccessful marriage, was eager to go to war in order to find a mate, and then it turned out how it happened.

According to official data, Pavlichenko, after being wounded, trained young snipers, in total she spent about a year in battles.

Pavlichenko wrote an autographic book in which she tried to explain her super sharpness. However, in the book there was a place for other positive qualities inherent in Lyudmila. Such as courage and hatred for the enemy who came to plunder their native land. She writes that in the plundered villages she saw shot families and destroyed houses. This changed her outlook and she began to experience an indescribable hatred of the enemy. Seeing close comrades in arms only strengthened her in this.

As an argument against the achievements of Pavlichenko, they often cite as an example the situation in the United States, during the visit of the Soviet delegation. It included another Soviet sniper Vladimir Pchelintsev. On his account there were 114 killed soldiers, he had the highest military award. Lyudmila did not have such an award, despite the fact that the number of Fritzes exceeded almost three times.

Reporters often asked eminent snipers to demonstrate their skills. Pchelintsev always agreed, but Lyudmila did not. This led to the thoughts of already doubting historians.

However, given the fact that even without the propaganda husk of the Soviet and Western press, the girl who went to the front and participated in fierce battles deserves sincere respect. And the image of the hero, which she took upon herself and carried on with honor, was needed by the country. Without such stories, there would be no other victories and successes.

Even if the number of enemies she killed was exaggerated, she deservedly gained fame. The very fact that the girl broke through to the front, survived in difficult battles near Odessa and Sevastopol already testifies to heroism and courage.

During her stay at the front, she received four concussions, three wounds. It was the front wounds that took away years of her life; Lyudmila died at the age of only 58.