4698) Did You Know Series (149): Lyudmila Pavlichenko (1916-1974) was a Soviet sniper during World War II and is widely regarded as the most successful female sniper in recorded military history. She is credited with 309 confirmed kills, including 36 enemy snipers:
Yesterday, I saw the movie "Battle for Sevastapol" and discovered the wartime achievements of Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko (12 July 1916 – 10 October 1974) who was a Soviet sniper in the Red Army during World War II.
She is the deadliest female
sniper, and the deadliest snipers in history, with 309 confirmed kills.
She served in the Red Army
during the siege of Odessa and the siege of Sevastopol, during the early stages
of the fighting on the Eastern Front.
After she was injured in
battle by a mortar shell, she was evacuated to Moscow.
After she recovered from her
injuries, she trained other Red Army snipers and was a public spokeswoman for
the Red Army.
In 1942, she toured the
United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. After the war ended in 1945, she
was reassigned as a senior researcher for the Soviet Navy. She passed away of a
stroke at the age of 58.
Early life and education:
Lyudmila Belova was born in
Belaya Tserkov, Kiev Governorate, in the Russian Empire (now in Kyiv Oblast,
Ukraine) on 12 July [O.S. 29 June] 1916, to Mikhail Belov, a locksmith from
Petrograd, and his wife Elena Trofimovna Belova (1897–1972), who was of
Russian nobility.
The family moved to Kiev
when Lyudmila was aged 14.
Her father was a Communist
Party member, and had served as a regimental commissar in the Red Army, being
awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
As a child, Lyudmila was a self-described tomboy, who was fiercely competitive at athletic activities.
In
Kiev, she joined an OSOAVIAKhIM shooting club, developed into an amateur
sharpshooter and earned her Voroshilov Sharpshooter badge and a marksman certificate.
In 1932, she married Alexei
Pavlichenko, and gave birth to a son, Rostislav (1932–2007). However, the
marriage was soon dissolved, and Lyudmila returned to live with her parents.
She attended night school as
well as performing household chores. During the day, she worked as a grinder at
the Kiev Arsenal factory.
She enrolled at Kiev
University in 1937, where she studied history and intended to be a scholar and
teacher. There, she competed on the university's track team as a sprinter and
pole vaulter.
She was also enrolled in a
military-style sniping school for six months by the Red Army.
World War II:
Pavlichenko in a trench
(1942).
In June 1941, Pavlichenko
was aged 25 in her fourth year studying history at Kiev University when Nazi
Germany began its invasion of the Soviet Union.
Pavlichenko was among the
first round of volunteers at the Odessa recruiting office, where she requested
to join the infantry.
The registrar pushed
Pavlichenko to be a nurse, but she refused. After seeing that she had completed
multiple training courses, she was finally accepted into the army as a sniper
and assigned to the Red Army's 25th Rifle Division.
There, she became one of
2,000 female snipers in the Red Army, of whom about 500 survived the war.
She was initially assigned
to digging trenches and communication routes, armed with a single RGD-33
grenade due to weapons shortages.
In the second half of July
1941, a comrade was severely injured by shrapnel and handed her his
Mosin–Nagant model 1891 bolt-action rifle.
On 8 August 1941 Lyudmila
experienced her debut as a wartime sniper when she killed two German officers
in Biliaivka at a distance of 400 metres.
Pavlichenko fought for about
2+1⁄2 months during the Siege of Odessa and is credited with killing 187
soldiers.
She was promoted to senior
sergeant in August 1941, when she added 100 more kills to her official tally.
At 25, she married a fellow
sniper, Alexei Kitsenko.
Soon after the marriage,
Kitsenko was mortally wounded by a mortar shell and died from his injuries a
few days later in the hospital.
When the Nazis and their
Romanian allies overran Odessa on 15 October 1941, her unit was withdrawn by
sea to Sevastopol, on the Crimean Peninsula, to fight in the siege of
Sevastopol.
There, she trained other
snipers, who were credited with killing over 100 Axis soldiers during the
battle.
In May 1942, newly promoted
Lieutenant Pavlichenko was cited by the Southern Army Council for killing 257
Axis soldiers. The number of soldiers Pavlichenko is credited with killing
during World War II was 309, including 36 Axis snipers.
In June 1942, Pavlichenko
was hit in the face with shrapnel from a mortar shell. When she was injured,
the Soviet High Command ordered for her to be evacuated from Sevastopol via
submarine.
She spent around a month in
the hospital. Once she had recovered from her injuries, instead of being sent
back to the front, she became a propagandist for the Red Army, where she was
nicknamed "Lady Death." (The Germans called her "the Russian
bitch from hell."). She also trained snipers for combat duty until the end
of the war in 1945.
Visits to Allied
countries:
.jpg)
Pavlichenko (centre) with
Justice Robert Jackson (left) and US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in Washington
DC in September 1942.
In 1942, Pavlichenko was
sent to Canada and the United States for a publicity visit as part of the
Soviet Union's attempts to convince the other Allies of World War II to open a
second front against Nazi Germany.
When she visited the United
States, she became the first Soviet citizen to be received by a US president,
as Franklin D. Roosevelt welcomed her to the White House.
Pavlichenko was later
invited by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to tour the US, relating her
experiences as a female soldier on the front lines.
During the publicity tour,
Pavlichenko was not taken seriously by the press and was referred to as the
"Girl Sniper."
Not cut out to be a diplomat, she was shy and said she just wanted to kill fascists.
When meeting
with reporters in Washington, D.C., she was dumbfounded by the kind of
questions put to her. "One reporter even criticised the length of the
skirt of my uniform, saying that in America women wear shorter skirts and
besides my uniform made me look fat."
They also asked if she used makeup
on the front line.
She challenged an especially
sexist reporter to a fistfight. She responded to a question about her underwear
so:
"I am proud to wear the
uniform of the legendary Red Army. It has been sanctified by the blood of my
comrades who've fallen in combat with the fascists."
She was described by the
reporters as very blunt and unemotional in her responses.
Pavlichenko appeared before
the International Student Assembly being held in Washington, DC, attended the
meetings of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and made appearances and
speeches in New York City and Chicago.
In New York City, she was
given a raccoon fur coat by Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia.
In Chicago, she stood before
large crowds, chiding the men to support a second front. "Gentlemen,"
she said, "I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist invaders by
now. Don't you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for
too long?"
Her words settled on the
crowd, then caused a surging roar of support. The United States government
presented her with a Colt semi-automatic pistol.
In Toronto, Ontario, she was
presented a Winchester Model 70 rifle equipped with a Weaver telescopic sight,
now on display at the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow.
While visiting Canada, along
with fellow sniper Vladimir Pchelintsev and Moscow fuel commissioner Nikolai
Kravchenko, she was greeted by thousands of people at Toronto's Union Station.
On Friday 21 November 1942, Pavlichenko visited Coventry, England, accepting donations of £4,516 from local workers to pay for three X-ray units for the Red Army.
She also visited the
ruins of Coventry Cathedral, then the Alfred Herbert works and Standard Motor
Factory, from where most funds had been raised. She had inspected a factory in
Birmingham earlier in the day.
Having been made an
officer, Pavlichenko never returned to combat, instead becoming an instructor
and training snipers until the war's end.
In 1943, she was
awarded the Gold Star of the Hero of the Soviet Union, as well as the Order of
Lenin twice.
Later life:
When the war ended,
Pavlichenko finished her education at Kiev University and began a career as a
historian.
From 1945 to 1953, she was a
research assistant at Soviet Navy headquarters. She was later active in the
Soviet Committee of the Veterans of War.
Death and legacy:
Pavlichenko passed away from a stroke on 10 October 1974 at 58 and was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. Her son, Rostislav, is buried next to her.
A second Soviet
commemorative stamp featuring her portrait was issued in 1976.
In popular culture:
Second Soviet
Union-issued postage stamp dedicated to Pavlichenko
The American folk
singer Woody Guthrie composed the song "Miss Pavlichenko" as
a tribute to her war record and to memorialise her visits to the United States
and Canada.
The song lyrics: Miss
Pavlichenko Song by Woody Guthrie:
Fell by your gun (oh)
Fell by your gun
Three hundred Nazis
fell by your gun (oh)
Fell by your gun
For the three hundred Nazis
Fell by your gun
Miss Pavilichenko's well
known to fame
Russia's your country,
fighting is your game
The whole world will always
love you for all time to come,
Three hundred nazis fell by
your gun.
Fell by your gun
Fell by your gun
For more than three hundred
nazis fell by your gun
Fell by your gun (yep)
Fell by your gun (oh)
More than three hundred
Nazis
fell by your gun
In your mountains and
canyons quiet as the deer.
Down in the forest knowing
no fear.
Lift up your sight. And down
comes a hun.
Three hundred nazis fell by your gun.
It was released as part of The Asch
Recordings.
Pavlichenko is the
subject of the 2015 film Battle for Sevastopol
(original Russian title, "Битва за Севастополь"). A joint
Ukrainian-Russian production, it was released in both countries on 2 April
2015, and its international premiere took place two weeks later at the Beijing
International Film Festival.
The first English
language edition of her memoirs, Lady Death, was published by Greenhill
Books in February 2018. It has a foreword by Martin Pegler and is part of the
Lionel Leventhal's Greenhill Sniper Library series.
In the 2021 game Call
of Duty: Vanguard, there is a character based loosely off of
Pavlichenko named Polina Petrova.
Pavlichenko's
experiences during World War II, both in battle and on tour in the United
States, have inspired several historical fiction novels,
including Beautiful Assassin (2010) and Kate Quinn's 2022 novel The
Diamond Eye.
Additionally, she was
featured in the Japanese manga series, The War of Greedy
Witches, where Pavlichenko served as one of the witches to fight
against Murasaki Shikibu in Walpurgis.
Awards and honours:
Two Orders of Lenin (16 July 1942 and 25
October 1943)
Two Medals "For Military Merit" (26
April 1942 and 13 June 1952)
Medal "For the Defence of Odessa"
(1942)
Medal "For the Defence of
Sevastopol" (1942)
Medal "For the Victory over Germany
in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (14 December 1945)
Voroshilov
Sharpshooter badge (1939)
Key facts:
Born on July 12, 1916, near
Kyiv (then part of the Russian Empire, now Ukraine).
Volunteered for the Red Army
after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
Fought mainly in the battles
around Odessa and Sevastopol.
Reached 187 confirmed kills
during the fighting near Odessa before her unit was moved to Sevastopol.
Was wounded in 1942 and
subsequently withdrawn from front-line combat.
Visited the United States in
1942 and became the first Soviet citizen received at the White House by
President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Earned the nickname "Lady
Death" because of her extraordinary combat record.
One of her most famous
quotes during her U.S. tour was:
“I am 25 years old and I
have killed 309 fascists. Gentlemen, don't you think that you have been hiding
behind my back for too long?”
Her story remains one of the
most remarkable examples of marksmanship and service during World War II.
Lyudmila Pavlichenko's 309
confirmed kills place her at the very top of the historical record for female
military snipers.
Here is how she compares with some other notable women snipers of World War II:
Sniper Country Confirmed KillsLyudmila Pavlichenko Soviet Union 309
Roza Shanina Soviet Union 59
confirmed kills (historical records commonly credit 59)
Aliya Moldagulova Soviet Union About
78 confirmed kills (historical records commonly credit 78)
Nina Petrova Soviet Union About
122 confirmed kills (historical records commonly credit 122)
What makes Pavlichenko's record especially remarkable is not just that she led all female snipers, but that her total is competitive with many of the best snipers of either sex. Her 309 confirmed kills included 36 enemy snipers, who were among the most difficult targets to eliminate.
For broader context,
some of the highest-scoring male snipers recorded even larger totals:
Simo Häyhä (Finland):
often credited with over 500 confirmed sniper kills during the Winter War.
Ivan Sidorenko
(Soviet Union): often credited with about 500 kills.
Vasily
Zaytsev (Soviet Union): commonly credited with about 242
confirmed kills. We saw the movie “Enemy at the Gates” several years ago in
which he figures)
Links:
7) "Sovka roskoshnaja" ("Staurophora celsia") Moth, Ukraine: Sterling Silver Proof (10 Hryvnia) and Cupro-nickel (2 Hrvynia) coins issued under its "Native Flora and Fauna Coin Series" by the National Bank of Ukraine
8) 1075 years since Princess Olga (890-969 AD), Ukraine: A Silver Proof Coin brought out by the National Bank of Ukraine,minted by the Ukrainian Mint: Year of issue: 2020
Links to some other posts on Kazakhstan coins on this Blog:
Links on posts from Poland:
Slavic Beasts Coin Series. Mint of Gdansk, Poland:
Posts on Transnistria:
1) A 100 Rouble Banknote issued by Russia to commemorate the XXII Winter Olympics - (07-23 February 2014) held at Sochi, Russia
2) Commemorative Coins issued when the 1980 22nd Summer Olympics were held in Moscow (19.07.1980 to 03.08.1980)
3) 2018 "Federation Internationale de Football Association" (FIFA) World Cup being held in Russia between 14.06.2018 &15.07.2018: Some Coins and stamps issued by Russia, Australia, Hungary, Spain & France to commemorate the Tournament/Championship
4) "Ancient Postal Routes - the Kholmogory post road (Arkhangelsk - Vologda - Yaroclavi - Moscow), Russia: Europa 2020 theme: A stamp brought out by "Pochta Rossii"(Russian Post) featuring this important post road: Date of Stamp issue: 15.01.2020
1) A 100 Rouble Banknote issued by Russia to commemorate the XXII Winter Olympics - (07-23 February 2014) held at Sochi, Russia
2) Commemorative Coins issued when the 1980 22nd Summer Olympics were held in Moscow (19.07.1980 to 03.08.1980)
3) 2018 "Federation Internationale de Football Association" (FIFA) World Cup being held in Russia between 14.06.2018 &15.07.2018: Some Coins and stamps issued by Russia, Australia, Hungary, Spain & France to commemorate the Tournament/Championship
4) "Ancient Postal Routes - the Kholmogory post road (Arkhangelsk - Vologda - Yaroclavi - Moscow), Russia: Europa 2020 theme: A stamp brought out by "Pochta Rossii"(Russian Post) featuring this important post road: Date of Stamp issue: 15.01.2020
Rajan Trikha has commented: ·
ReplyDelete"Wonderful and informative post👍👍
Thank you so much, Trikha sahab.
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