Meet Maria Bochkareva the fearless Russian soldier in World War One who headed up the Russian Women's Battalion of Death.
When you think of women participating in World War I, you probably have an image of a nurse or a woman on the home front baking cookies, knitting socks, and writing letters to the chaps on the front line. What doesn’t immediately come to mind is the Russian Women’s Battalion of Death led by the fearless Maria Bochkareva.
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All original music written and performed by Kelly Chase.
Hi, this is Kelly Chase and you are listening to History Detective, a podcast where I delve into the past to uncover the mysteries of history and then I explore how that story might be reimagined through song. This is Case 13: Maria Bochkareva and the Russian Women’s Battalion of Death.
When you think of women participating in World War I, you probably have an image of a nurse or a woman on the home front baking cookies, knitting socks, and writing letters to the chaps on the front line. What doesn’t immediately come to mind is the Russian Women’s Battalion of Death led by the fearless Maria Bochkareva. Yes, I said Women’s Battalion of Death. So today we are going to find out how this all female battalion came into existence during the First World War.
Back in the “Women of the Viet Cong” episode, I mentioned that it was not until 2013 that women in Australia were allowed to serve in combat roles in the army. We may have been one of the first countries to allow women to vote, but Russia beat us to the front lines by almost 100 years.
There was a lot going on in Russia, they were not only boots-deep in the First World War, but there were also the beginnings of a revolution brewing- the Russian Revolution to be precise. There was much internal conflict going on. Russia was ruled by a Tsar- think emperor- however for much of the country they were living in poverty. And in 1917- smack bang in the middle of WWI a group called the Bolsheviks seized power and removed the Tsar from the throne.
Before this Russian Revolution happened, World War One was kicking along, and there were many Russian women who wanted to join the army to help fight against the Germans, but there were laws that stopped women from fighting. There was one way around it though, women could get direct permission from the Tsar to join the armed forces.
Enter Maria Bochkareva. Until this point, Maria had had a pretty awful upbringing. She had an abusive alcoholic father, so she got married at 15 to get away from him, but her husband also turned out to be a brutal alcoholic. The she met a petty criminal and ran away with him to Siberia, where he also started drinking and became abusive. So, in 1914 when the war broke out, joining the war effort seemed like a good way for the 24-year old to escape from this perpetual cycle of alcoholic men and violence.
However, when she went to join up, her application was refused, due to her being a woman, and the officer told her she would have to get the permission from the Tsar if she wanted to enlist. The only problem was, that because of her peasant upbringing, she was barely literate. She convinced the officer to help her write a telegram to the Tsar. And you know what? The Tsar said yes!
In her memoir, that she had help writing because of her low literacy she claimed, “My heart yearned to be there, in the boiling caldron of war, to be baptized in its fire and scorched in its lava.” So many metaphors!
I did find a few sources that say that she followed her husband to war, one of those being a 1918 newspaper article, so I suspect the information from that article was not particularly reliable considering the general attitudes about divorce and their need to paint Bochkareva out to be a heroine.
So off went Bochkareva to the Western Front where she served for 2 years. If you see a photo of her, you will see her decorated with medals for her service. One of those medals was the St George Cross which was awarded for “undaunted courage.” During this time, she was shot in the hand and forearm, her leg was shattered by a bullet and she had a shell fragment embedded in her spine which paralysed her for 4 months before she was rehabilitated and passed her physical to get back to the front line.
An article in the 1918 Melbourne Age describes her like this, “in looks, she wears the uniform of an officer—khaki tunic, breeches… and serviceable-looking boots. Her jet-black hair has been cut
short, and has a side parting… Powerfully built, of medium height, with an extremely intelligent face and a capacious forehead.” I had to look up capacious it means wide or broad.
So how did we go from this one female soldier to entire battalions of women serving on the front?
A few years into the war, the male Russian soldiers were beginning to be disillusioned with the fighting. There was a huge problem with soldiers’ desertion and mutiny. So, the idea was struck upon that an all-female battalion could be created, the purpose of which was to inspire the men and have a civilising effect on them and if that didn’t work, they would be shamed by the fact that women were fighting.
There was a massive response of women wanting to join Battalion of Death and they were called the Battalion of Death because they were willing to fight to the death. 2000 women applied to be a part of the first battalion that Bochkareva was charged with training. But this was whittled down to 300. Part of the reason they lost so many was that Bochkareva was a harsh ruler and many of the women wanted to start a council to represent their own interests, just as the male soldiers had, but Bochkareva said no. She lost 800 recruits this way. In another story about her, she apparently found one of her female soldiers being intimate with a male soldier, so the ran the woman through with a bayonet. Harsh!
Another logistical problem was uniforms, because of the war shortages, uniforms for a woman’s body type were non-existent, so the women persevered and just wore men’s uniforms. However, there was a particular problem with finding small enough boots to kit out the new battalion. Bochkareva also insisted that her troops all shave their heads, just like was regulation for the men. Having long hair in the trenches and the front line would have been a very dirty and itchy affair, so she probably had a really good point. And maybe she also thought that this would stop the fraternisation between the men and the women.
Before I go any further, I want to introduce you to another interesting player in this story, a female American journalist called Bessie Beatty, who worked for the San Francisco Bulletin. She travelled to Russia during the war and spent 10 days living in the trenches with Bochkareva and the Women’s Battalion of Death. She interviewed many of the women and upon return to America wrote a book called, “The Red Heart of Russia”. In her interviews of the women in the battalion she reported on the fact that these women came from all walks of life. Some were factory workers, some educated, there were professionals, clerks, peasants and dressmakers all with varied reasons for joining up.
So, once they were trained and ready to fight there was only one problem, that the male soldiers were a little bit confused about their presence. When the women’s battalion were ordered to attack, the male soldiers, instead of supporting them, held a meeting to decide whether they should join in or not. The women just went regardless and eventually half of the men decided to back them up and they ended up taking the first and second lines of their German enemies, until they ran out of ammo and had to retreat. But the German soldiers were mighty peeved at being defeated by women.
After the success of the first all-women’s battalion, this inspired the formation of 15 more units, about 5000 more women joined up. But this didn’t last for long.
Remember how I said there was a revolution brewing. This revolution at the end of 1917 was the end of the women’s battalions. You see, they were set up by the previous leaders, and the new government- the Bolsheviks- thought they were loyal to the previous government. In Bochekareva’s case they were quite correct, she really did not like the Bolshevik soldiers.
She fled Russia and went to America. While she was in America, she found someone to help to write her memoirs. Now the Bolsheviks were a communist system government, and of course both America and Australia were very anti-communist, so she had a captive audience for her memoirs, and she painted the Bolsheviks in an incredibly negative light. An Australian newspaper even published some extracts of her memoirs in 1919. They described her as a “Russian Joan of Arc transplanted into a Reign of Terror” and here are some of the things that she had to say about the Bolsheviks, “The hundred Bolshevik soldiers surrounded the officers, cursed them, beat them with the butts of their rifles…and handled them like dogs.” Further adding, “The Bolshevik soldiers then decided to gouge out the eyes of the five youths in punishment for their attempt to run away.” “He looked savage, and his hideous laughter sent shudders up my spine. The bloodthirsty brute!” And perhaps my favourite, “’Ho, ho, ho’ He laughed diabolically.” And “He paced the room like a lion thirsting for my blood”.
After she published her memoirs, she returned to Siberia and in 1920 the Bolsheviks captured and imprisoned her. She spent 4 months in jail before she was put on trial as an enemy of the state and executed by firing squad at the age of 30.
Now I would like to play you a song that I wrote which was inspired by reading the chapter about Maria Bochkareva in Pamela D. Toler’s incredible book Women Warriors. It is called Beating Red Heart. You will
This Kelly Chase, on the Case.
Beating Red Heart (SONG)
Be still my beating red heart
Stop this war before it starts
If boots don’t fit, I’ll go over your head
I’ve a right to bear arms and fight to the death
See your sisters
Feel the shame
Sacrifices made in vain
Pure as crystal
Break the chains
Bitter tears
Screams of pain
Play by my rules or don’t play at all
Can’t stand by and watch it all fall
Mother she fades away
As I watch her slow decay
See your sisters
Feel the shame
Sacrifices made in vain
Pure as crystal
Break the chains
Bitter tears
Screams of pain
Be still my beating red heart
Stop this war before it starts
If you are a teacher or student, you will find reflection questions in the show notes. You can follow me on Twitter @HistoryDetect, Instagram @Historydetective 9 or visit the Historydetectivepodcast.com website. But if you would like readymade classroom resources to accompany this or any other episode, head on over to Amped Up Learning.
Next time on History Detective, we will investigate the harrowing tale of the child migrants who were sent to Australia after World War II.
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