By the autumn of 1943, Lida Larionova, a sniper on the Volkhov Front near Leningrad, although already a seasoned infantrywoman, had killed only one German. This dark-haired eighteen-year-old from the north of Russia, with her high cheekbones, was one of hundreds of women trained on sniper courses while continuing to do their “day job” on the front line. Most of them were from the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts where, until spring 1943, the situation was often one of stalemate, so there was little excuse not to train.
It is in this kind of static, trench warfare, when both sides are building up their forces by remaining on the defensive, that snipers come into their own. They harry the enemy relentlessly, keeping him constantly on the alert, unable to raise his head above the parapet of the trenches, afraid to run across open ground. Without inflicting major damage, because losses as a result of sniper fire are rarely substantial, snipers wear enemy soldiers down psychologically.
In the Red Army, the sniper movement began in the darkest days of the war, in autumn 1941 on the Leningrad Front. It was not a policy launched from above, but devised by marksmen like Vladimir Pchelintsev who had trained on shooting ranges before the war and now saw an opportunity to do something, at least, to unsettle the Germans, who were subjecting Leningrad and its defenders to a merciless siege. It was not long before the top brass saw the value of the movement, and a large-scale campaign was mounted in both the national and army press and among the troops. It became fashionable to train as a sniper. Successful snipers were the pride of their units.
Vladimir Pchelintsev is considered to have been one of the pioneers. A year after opening his tally as a sniper at Nevskaya Dubrovka, Pchelintsev was in New York, thinking back to that autumn day in 1941 when “the faltering voice of the battalion commander whispered, ‘Give it to him!’” The German had come down to the Neva for a bucket of water and was 400–450 metres away, a distance from which, on a firing range, Vladimir was guaranteed to hit the target. Now, though, when he had the German in his sights, his hands were trembling. And then he “understood with total clarity what the problem was: in full view of everyone, he was about to kill a human being.” Ordering himself to cast off such sentimentality and remember all the many, many Soviet people he had seen killed and wounded since the beginning of the war, Pchelintsev fired.67 A second German ran to the aid of the man who had fallen, and the battalion commander now shouted at the top of his voice, “Get the second one too! D’you hear me, Pchelintsev, hit the second one!” Vladimir soon found himself the centre of attention, with reporters turning up to his unit. His letter to Vezhlivtsev, another sniper, challenging him to a contest, and Vezhlivtsev’s reply were printed in the front-line newspaper. Other snipers piled in. Now there were articles about socialist competition between snipers. (In the U.S.S.R., “socialist competition” was encouraged in every sphere of life.) Snipers shared experiences and told their stories. The front-line newspapers reprinted each other’s reports and the national newspapers reprinted those of the front-line newspapers. The movement spread. Soon snipers’ rallies were being held, intended to boost the morale of the troops.
“While the German army continued until 1940 to use the old, pre-war optical sights, the Red Army developed a modern sniper rifle and trained huge numbers of snipers. Russian snipers acted alone, as a sniper and observer team, as sniper pairs, and even in whole companies of up to sixty snipers.”68 The German sniper who wrote that said his Russian counterparts caused the Germans a great deal of trouble at the beginning of the war, and in 1942, when the war had become more static as the German advance slowed down and both sides spent long intervals of time in defensive positions, they became a real menace. Perhaps he was exaggerating, but the passage gives a sense of the fear Russian snipers instilled in the enemy.
As the sniper movement developed, marksmen, of whom, thanks to Osoaviakhim, there was a plentiful supply in the army, saw they could play an important part in the war effort and become a military elite, on a level with pilots and tank crews. They could be confident of being provided with the equipment they needed, which consisted of no more than a sniper’s rifle. (The most popular model was the Mosin, which had a telescopic sight providing fourfold magnification.)
At the end of 1941, 48-year-old Nina Petrova from Leningrad finally got her opportunity to work on her speciality in the war. A physical education and sports instructor for the Spartak sports club, a Master of Sport who had trained sharpshooters, she was sent to the front as a nurse. For a long time the army was reluctant to take her on even in that capacity because of her age. Petrova, however, finding herself close to the front line and defending her hometown, was just waiting for an opportunity to prove that, even though approaching fifty, as someone who before the war had drawn crowds of onlookers at shooting galleries, she should properly be employed at the front as a sniper.
She eventually got her hands on a sniper’s rifle, and the commander permitted her to go “hunting” in her spare time. A nurse in a field hospital has little enough of that, but the commanders finally woke up to the asset they had once they saw her tally begin to mount. From then on until her death in 1945, Petrova ran front-line sniper courses, took her trainees out to shoot at the front and, of course, went hunting herself.69
Thousands of rank-and-file soldiers who never trained with Osoaviakhim before the war, trained at the front and aspired to being given a sniper’s rifle, production of which was steadily stepped up as the conflict wore on. Lida Larionova, a simple country girl, who until recently had not known the meaning of the word “sniper”, also mastered the profession. She had not completed her secondary schooling or been to sniper school, and she knew nothing at all about ballistics but, like Nina Petrova’s trainees, learned everything on a course at the front.
Lida was called up in September 1942. Her village in Vologda Province was poverty-stricken as only villages in the north of Russia can be, where the soil is poor and the summer is very short. Bread had long been a luxury, and there was virtually nothing to eat but potatoes and turnips. Seeing Lida on her way to the army, her mother cooked potatoes in their skins and gave her dried potato and dried turnips (they also prepared these in larger quantities and forwarded them to the front in lieu of tax). Her mother wrapped it all up in a cloth and put the bundle in a basket along with Lida’s only decent dress. She had nothing else to give.70 Lida’s younger sister, Afanasiya, known to the family as Faya, was in her early teens, but walked the thirty kilometres to the enlistment office in Babaevo with her sister. Their aunt was waiting for them there and accompanied them to the army office. She was crying. Faya was puzzled by her tears because she was sure the war would soon be over and Lida would come home a heroine. In fact, she envied her.
Faya also desperately wanted to get to the front, but was too young. She was, however, old enough for the “labour front”. Babaevo was on the front line, and Faya, who was only fourteen, along with others her age, was taken to work to support it. She loved school, but now that had to wait. Teenagers were sent to fell and transport timber, which fuelled the small steam locomotives serving the front. The stokers on the locomotives were also teenagers. They slept on the floor, and were so badly fed that the emaciated boys and girls soon became exhausted. They were sometimes issued black soap, but washed only their hair, saving soap by washing the rest of themselves with oatmeal. Faya had felt boots, but they were patched and had holes. The bombing was terrible, and caused the horses to bolt. She remembered one time she was lying on the ground among the birches, bombs were falling, and she said over and over again, “Lord, let me get through this!” There were a lot of wolves that year and they were just as terrifying. The horses would also bolt if they scented a wolf, and a chill would run through the young girl’s heart. Faya hated the wolves more than the Germans. When she saw Germans at close quarters, her main emotion was pity. There were so many German prisoners in Babaevo during that first year of war, and they were totally unprepared for the Russian winter, skeletally thin, ill, and with only “thin hats and coats”. The children brought them cranberries, which the Germans, who gave the children tobacco in return, ate to stave off scurvy. When the children brought the fruit, the Germans would queue quietly, without any pushing and shoving. Many of them were to find their last resting place in a large German cemetery nearby.71
On the day they were to leave for the army, there were many girls from surrounding villages at the army office, from Babaevo and even Borisovo, fifty kilometres away. They were informed they would be going to Vologda to be trained as nurses. When they arrived at the Volkhov Front, there was a lull in the fighting and Lida quickly got used to her new surroundings and role. There were not many wounded, and there was time for singing and dancing. The young accordionist was a good musician. The main song he played was “Katyusha”, as well as more recent favourites such as “The Dugout” and “Your Blue Shawl”. Lida was embarrassed that the girls from the towns knew all the steps for these tunes, while she knew only Russian folk dances.
Taking advantage of the relative calm, the soldiers were given a lot of political indoctrination, and also offered courses for learning new military skills. The most popular were for machine-gunners and snipers. Lida wanted to learn a new profession, so she applied for the sniper course and was accepted. It was short but intensive, and started with drill. They seemed to do a lot of running, and also had to jump over a skipping rope, but their main occupation was shooting. By now it was May, warming up, but they were still in greatcoats as the supply units always took time issuing uniforms for the new season. They learned to shoot standing up and lying down, with the target set at 100 or 200 metres, and often moving. This was even more difficult, because you had to make swift calculations about angles and speed. She was not very good at first, but was taken in hand by the young commander when he found out they were from the same part of the country. Lida thought he was very nice, and wondered whether or not he was married. “Neighbour,” he promised, “I’ll teach you to shoot a fly in the eye.”72
Anya Sheinova was on the course with Lida, and she too was at the front as a nurse. They were put into a pair and trained together. This was the standard practice for the Red Army. One partner in the pair carried out observation and covered their partner, while the other one shot. Partners swapped roles on a regular basis: one’s eyes quickly got tired from observing intently. Lida and Anya started going out “hunting” together, seeking potential victims each time but afraid to pull the trigger. On the day that Lida did eventually open her tally she found it very difficult to kill the German who appeared in her sights. He was quite close and, as she had been taught, Lida aimed at his head. She knew that it was only when the distance was greater that you should aim for the chest, to give yourself a better chance of hitting the target. He was young. “I saw him slump forward,” Lidia Larionova recalled many decades later. Horrified, she jumped out of the trench and ran all the way back to the medical unit. “I’ve killed a person!” she screamed. The sergeant who had sent the two of them to that position laughed and pulled her cap down over her eyes. “You’ve killed an enemy,” the nurses said, congratulating her, but Lida sobbed her heart out.
Lida wrote home that she had a warm, new fur jacket, felt boots and padded trousers and that they were well fed. To ragged, hungry Faya it felt as if her sister had won the lottery. While there was no fighting, Lida and her friends even managed to get their hair permed in a small local town. But then there came the offensive – the operation that finally broke the siege of Leningrad and liberated the Leningrad province. When the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts linked up, “We had other things to think about than perms.” In the offensive Lida once again became a nurse, on the order of her commander. She and Anya found themselves in the middle of the fighting at Myasnoy Bor, a village whose ominous name meant Flesh Woods and where, in summer 1942, 2 Assault Army had perished in the encirclement. Now, though, in 1943, Lida was with troops liberating the settlement. She remembered how young some of the boys were, seventeen-year-olds called up to the army earlier that year. They were raw, inexperienced, and were all killed.
Lida was grateful to their commanders, who kept women away from the thick of the fray. She knew that if she had been at the front throughout the war, she would never have come back alive – to attack with the infantry meant certain death. Nikolai Nikulin, a gunner fighting in that area, remembered a girl sniper just like Lida who lost her life during the offensive: “We ran on. A place where the trenches crossed. From down below came a frightened voice: ‘Run as fast as you can! This area is under fire.’ We went on even further. We were worn out and had to slow down. In one of the trenches we saw a corpse that had lost its legs, with red stumps instead of knees. Long hair, a familiar face. ‘Look, that’s the girl sniper from our neighbouring company. The one who sang so well! Damn!’ the soldier ahead of us exclaimed as he leapt over the body.”73
“Prepare to receive wounded!” Lida and Anya were ordered during the fighting at a station in Novgorod Province. Anya, who considered herself a sniper, not a nurse, just said, “I’m going to the front line,” and left. Nobody disciplined her afterwards. Lida was more obedient and continued to tend the wounded. She swam across the River Velikaya under fire, and had to lie flat, unable to raise her head during intense bombing somewhere in Lithuania, where they were forced to lie in the snow almost all day. She would probably have found killing her second German less traumatic than the first, but did not go back to being a sniper. That was not for her, Lida decided. Women aren’t meant to kill.
The Soviet military authorities disagreed, however, and in May 1943 decreed that large numbers of girls should be trained as snipers at a special college.74
*
Anya Mulatova was drafted into the army in summer 1943. Her conscription papers were delivered and, unlike some other girls she knew, she made no attempt to hide. To begin with she was not sure why she was called up when others were not, but when she saw that no papers were sent to Larisa, the daughter of the director of the Zagotzerno* grain mill, she drew her own conclusions. “Well, look at the family she’s from,” Anyuta said to herself. “And we’re just ordinary . . .”
In the enlistment office, to which she went with a friend from her village of Simanshchina in Penza Province, they were told about a recent appeal from the Young Communist League Central Committee to girls of their age, and given to understand that even though they had been conscripted, they could nevertheless consider themselves to be volunteering, which is what was entered in their papers. For the rest of her life Anya duly said she had volunteered.
Anya Mulatova had completed ninth grade at school in Simanshchina and was very keen to complete tenth. She loved her school, but it was requisitioned as a hospital. She and her classmates helped to retrieve the pupils’ desks, the teacher’s desk, and the globe of the Earth, which was the sum total of the school’s equipment. The Germans were at the gates of Moscow, and very soon casualties were arriving at the school. For a time there was even a wagon at the station with wounded soldiers who had nowhere else to go. Anya and her friends went to read letters to them and sing songs, and did what they could to help the nursing staff. The injured soldiers (many of whom had “serious, terrible wounds”) greatly appreciated their visits.
Anya sang well. She had a plain face with small green eyes and a nose that was not exactly refined, but she was tall and well proportioned, and had a mane of curly brown hair that she formed into ringlets, white skin and rosy cheeks. Many of the wounded found her pretty. Like other girls, she had her own special patient to look after, Vladimir Shevelyov from Moscow. This official initiative, for the civilians to take care of a particular wounded soldier, became very popular. They wrote to each other for a while afterwards and, when she was sent to sniper school, she visited his mother and aunt in Moscow.75
The school ceased to be used as a hospital but was not reopened and, to help support her family, Anya worked at the collective farm as a bookkeeper. It was not she who saved the family from starvation, though, but her sister, Liza, who worked in the Zagotzerno office. Lisa allocated some of the oil cake waste (what remained after oil was squeezed from sunflower seeds) to feed poultry, and some she took home. The family sifted the waste, pounded it in a wooden mortar, and baked it into flatbreads. These loaves, together with their own potatoes and pumpkins, were their staple diet.
Anya’s younger brother, Vladimir, suffered most from hunger. He was a growing boy who, having heard about pilots delivering food to people who needed it, longed to become one himself and drop a whole sack of flour down to his family.
Anya did not recall any very elaborate farewell as she left for the army. There were no tears from her mother, and in all the commotion her departure passed almost unnoticed. Her mother did not know she was enlisting as a sniper, and if she had it would have meant nothing to her because she was completely illiterate and could not read the newspapers. She had too much work on her hands to spare any time for crying. She started worrying about her daughter only later, when she received her letters from the front, which Anya’s siblings read to her: “Dear Mother, It is night and I am standing in a trench. How I miss my warm, soft bed.”
When she heard she was going to sniper school, Anya was neither particularly pleased nor dismayed. If she was to be a sniper, fine. Quite what that involved she did not know, but Anya decided that what would be would be, and that what she was told to do, she would do. She wouldn’t have minded being a signaller. The only thing she did not want to be was a nurse, because she was afraid of blood.
Girls from all over the U.S.S.R. were brought to the Central Women’s Sniper Training School, which was modelled on existing sniper courses and opened at Veshnyaki in Moscow Province. Among them were many very committed patriots, and not a few, like Klava Panteleyeva, had surreptitiously added a year to their age to get into the army. Others, like Tonya Zakharova, had seen young men, whom they had married just before the war, disappear off to the front, and were eager to go there themselves to be closer to them. Most of the girls, however, had been conscripted and had no choice in the matter.
One of these involuntary volunteers was Kalya Petrova. The war had already started when she completed her secondary education in the industrial town of Lunino, near Penza. She wanted to be a German teacher like her mother, but the war decided otherwise. The main priority was to stave off starvation, and Kalya decided to work for the time being in an arms factory where there were decent rations, and think again later. Her father and sister were already at the front and her mother, in order to feed herself, was selling off her possessions.
Life at the factory was hellish. The food was terrible, and the aunt she was living with in Penza was unwilling to cook the food that Kalya had received on her rations coupons. They were given almost no days off, but when one was suddenly allowed, her mother went to extraordinary lengths to feed her daughter properly. When she had eaten until she could eat no more, Kalya rolled on the floor with a terrible stomach ache. It was no easier for the other girls (all the workers at the factory were girls), but Kalya was one of the first to rebel. Having put up with the life for a year, she simply ran away. Her mother was horrified. The secret police had long held suspicions about their family: Kalya’s mother was a merchant’s daughter, her husband had been a lieutenant in the tsarist army. Both categories were considered highly suspicious by the N.K.V.D. and constantly risked arrest and imprisonment. In the 1930s both parents had often been called in for questioning. The family lived in constant fear. What might happen now Kalya’s mother could not imagine; people working in arms factories were considered to have been mobilised, and to walk out was tantamount to desertion. Kalya knew a girl who had been sent to prison for doing the same thing, but decided she could put up with it no longer. Her mother thought of a solution. She went to a former student of hers who was now working at the enlistment centre and asked for her daughter to be accepted as a volunteer. Kalya Petrova, who knew nothing whatever about shooting and had never had the slightest interest in the sport, was sent off to train as a sniper.76
“During the war years, the Young Communist League Central Committee conducted seventy-three youth mobilisation campaigns. Of the 800,000 young people they sent to the armed forces, 400,000 were girls,” official publications proudly declared.77 Now that Soviet myths have been debunked, we know that many of these young women were not in fact volunteers. Though this does not detract from the debt of gratitude their country owes them, it is worth remembering that many who were conscripted in those years and sent to work as signallers, snipers and anti-aircraft gunners could have made just as significant a contribution to the cause in the rear. Who can say how many children were unable to go to school during the war because there were no teachers in the villages?
In 1942, Klava Shilo was a schoolgirl, one of six children in a family her mother raised in direst poverty. All her life her heart was pained when she thought back to February of that year, when her favourite teacher, Lyubov Alexandrovna, was seen off to the front. The young teacher had been evacuated from Kursk to Klava’s village of Yeginsai just before the arrival of the Germans, leaving her mother and sisters to suffer under the occupation. One time, right there in the classroom, overcome with sadness, she wept as she put her hand on Klava’s head and said she looked just like the little sister she had left behind with the Germans. Shortly afterwards, the teacher was called up; that Sunday the pupils of Yeginsai came to see her on her way as she was driven on a sledge through the village. Klava’s mother had knitted warm mittens for the teacher. She asked them to halt the sledge, and invited Lyubov Alexandrovna into their house. An oil lamp lit the room where her mother was cutting up a pumpkin to cook for the next day. Klava’s brothers and sisters were sitting round the table nibbling pieces of raw pumpkin. The teacher was delighted with the mittens and said thank you very warmly. As she got up to leave, she reached out towards the heap of raw pumpkin and asked if she could take a little. Klava’s mother scooped a mug of kvasha* out of the pot for her to drink. She wrapped some grits made from maize and grain husks in a piece of newspaper, and put the raw pumpkin right in her new mittens. When she looked down at the teacher’s feet and saw that all she had to wear that harsh winter was a pair of ordinary shoes under galoshes, her eyes filled with tears, but she just had nothing more to give. When Klava’s mother came out to see Lyubov off, though, she brought some homespun sackcloth and tucked it round Lyubov’s legs, stuffing the improvised garment with hay. Later, the teacher wrote to tell them she was at Stalingrad, but after that there were no more letters. “The war swept away all trace of her,” Klava’s mother sighed. 78