Patriotic Women in the Russia of 1917

Abstract

In 1917, with the First World War still raging, Western countries perceived the episodes of generalised social agitation as contagious destruction. The images captured in Russia were shocking: dead in the street, workers dominating public squares, women defending the Czar’s Palace, bearing weapons and fighting in the streets. While Western women were creating links through diverse struggles, Russian activists had advanced their positions demanding for responsibilities in the war effort and insertion into the army. Showing their heads shaven, their chests tightly wrapped under military clothing and their manly looks, the Battalions of Women, Battalions of Death, were formed under the Provisional Government and Minister Kerensky and were authorised to fight on the front. It was the peasant Maria Bochkareva who led these units. With the Revolution, however, the Red Army dismantled the Battalions and purged the women in them, considering them as representatives of the bourgeoisie. This paper describes the historical context of the emergent Battalions of Bochkareva and reviews the tradition of Russian activism and the vital journey of some Russian volunteers in the First World War. Furthermore, it reviews revolutionary facts impacting the fate of women soldiers during the Civil War and the international creation of the myth of the Russian heroine from the figure of Maria Bochkareva. The bibliography provided in the footnotes may be a starting point for a future reflection on those modes of feminist activism, which are unusual in contemporary women’s experience, including the voluntary exercise of violence.