In
May 1917, Maria Bochkareva, persuaded
Alexander Kerensky, Russia's new leader,
to allow her to form a Women's Battalion. Initially Bochkareva had
2,000 women under her command, but after fighting for three months
on the front-line, numbers had fallen to 250.
On 25th October, Bochkareva and the few remaining members of the Women's
Battalion attempted to defend the Winter Palace against Bolshevik
forces. John Reed, an American journalist
in Petrograd during the revolution reported that "all sorts of
sensational stories were published in the anti-Bolshevik press, and
told in the City Duma, about the fate of the Women's Battalion defending
the Palace. It was said that some of the girl-soldiers had been thrown
from the windows into the street, most of the rest had been violated,
and many had committed suicide as a result of the horrors they had
gone through."
After meeting Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko,
the British Military Attaché in Petrograd, Alexander
Knox, managed to get the women released from prison.
The
Duma appointed a commission to investigate
the claims of ill-treatment and on 16th November, Dr Mandelbaum, reported
that three had been violated, and that one had committed suicide.
However, he claimed that none had been "thrown out of the windows
of the Winter Palace."
On 21 November, 1917, the Bolshevik Military Revolutionary Committee
officially dissolved the Women's Battalion. Its leader, Maria
Bochkareva, managed to escape and eventually emigrated to the
United States.
(1)
Stephen
Graham, Russia and the World (1915)
There is
scarcely a town or school in Russia from which boys have not run away
to the war. Hundreds of girls have gone off in boys' clothes and tried
to pass themselves off as boys and enlist as volunteers, and several
have got through, since the medical examination is only a negligible
formality required in one place, forgotten in another; the Russians
are so fit as a whole. So among the wounded in the battle of the Nieman
was a broad-shouldered, vigorous girl from Zlato-Ust, only sixteen
years old, and nobody had dreamed that she was other than the man
whom she was passing herself off. But not only boys and girls of sixteen
and seventeen, but children of eleven and twelve have contrived to
have a hand either in the fighting or in the nursing.
(2)
The Literary Digest (19th June, 1915)
There appears
to be no sex-antagonism in Russia. Indeed the line of sex cleavage
is of the very faintest. Men and women do not lead separate lives.
They work side by side normally, whether in the fields or as students
of medicine, politics and the like in universities. And, as every
one knows, there are (or were before the war changed everything) as
many women Anarchists as men. It is only natural that the iron-hearted
and adventurous should desire to share in the great adventure.
(3)
Speech made by Yasha
Bochkareva to the Women's Death Battalion
on the steps of St. Isaac's Cathedral in Petrograd in June 1917.
Come with us in the name of your fallen heroes. Come with us to dry
the tears and heal the wounds of Russia. Protect her with yours lives.
We women are turning into tigresses to protect our children from a
shameful yoke - to protect the freedom of our country.
(4)
Bessie Beatty, a journalist from San Francisco,
spent several days with the Women's Death Battalion. She wrote about
it in her book The Red Heart of Russia, that was published
in 1918.
Women can fight. Women have the courage, the endurance and
even the strength for fighting. The Russians have demonstrated that
and, if necessary, all the other women in the world can demonstrate
it.
(5)
In her diary, Florence Farmborough
records hearing about Yasha
Bochkareva, the founder of the Women's
Death Battalion.
26th July, 1917: Yasha Bochkareva, a Siberian woman soldier had
served in the Russian Army since 1915 side by side with her husband;
when he had been killed, she continued to fight. She had been wounded
twice and three times decorated for valour. When she knew the soldiers
were deserting in large numbers, she made her way to Moscow and Petrograd
to start recruiting for a Woman's Battalion. It is reported that she
had said, "If the men refuse to fight for their country, we will
show them what the women can do!" So this woman warrior, Yasha
Bochkareva, began her campaign; it was said that it had met with singular
success. Young women, some of aristocratic families, rallied to her
side; they were given rifles and uniforms and drilled and marched
vigorously. We Sisters were of course thrilled to the core.
9th August, 1917: Last Monday, an ambulance-van drove up with three
wounded women soldiers. We were told that they belonged to the Bochkareva
Women's Death Battalion. We had not heard the full name before, but
we instantly guessed that it was the small army of women recruited
in Russia by the Siberian women soldier, Yasha Bochkareva. Naturally
we were all very impatient to have news of this remarkable battalion,
but the women were sadly shocked and we refrained from questioning
them until they had rested. The van driver was not very helpful but
he did know that the battalion had been cut up by the enemy and had
retreated.
13th August, 1917: At dinner we heard more of the Women's Death Battalion.
It was true; Bochkareva had brought her small battalion down south
of the Austrian Front, and they had manned part of the trenches which
had been abandoned by the Russian Infantry. The size of the Battalion
had considerably decreased since the first weeks of recruitment, when
some 2000 women and girls had rallied to the call of their leader.
Many of them, painted and powdered, had joined the Battalion as an
exciting and romantic adventure; she loudly condemned their behaviour
and demanded iron discipline. Gradually the patriotic enthusiasm had
spent itself; the 2000 slowly dwindled to 250. In honour to those
women volunteers, it was recorded that they did go into the attack;
they did go "over the top". But not all of them. Some remained
in the trenches, fainting and hysterical; others ran or crawled back
to the rear.
(6) The journalist, John
Reed, was in Russia when the Women's Battalion attempted to defend
the Winter Palace against the Bolsheviks.
Immediately following the taking of the Winter Palace all sorts
of sensational stories were published in the anti-Bolshevik press,
and told in the City Duma, about the fate of the Women's Battalion
defending the Palace. It was said that some of the girl-soldiers had
been thrown from the windows into the street, most of the rest had
been violated, and many had committed suicide as a result of the horrors
they had gone through.
The City Duma appointed a commission to investigate the matter. On
16th November the commission returned from Levashovo, headquarters
of the Women's Battalion. Madame Tyrkova reported that the girls had
been taken to the barracks of the Pavlovsky Regiment, and that there
some of them had been badly treated; but that at present most of them
were at Levashovo, and the rest scattered about the city in private
houses. Dr Mandelbaum, another of the commission, testified dryly
that none of the women had been thrown out of the windows of the Winter
Palace, that none were wounded, that three had been violated, and
that one had committed suicide, leaving a note which said that she
had been "disappointed in her ideals."
On 21 November the Military Revolutionary Committee officially dissolved
the Women's Battalion, at the request of the girls themselves, who
returned to civilian clothes.
(7)
In his memoirs Alfred Knox, the
British Military Attaché in Petrograd,
reported that he helped free the Women's Battalion
from the Bolsheviks.
When I
returned to the British Embassy I found Lady Georgina in great excitement.
Two officer instructors of the Women's Battalion had come with a terrible
story to the effect that the 137 women taken in the Winter Palace
had been beaten and tortured, and were now being outraged in the Grenadersky
barracks.
I borrowed
the Ambassador's car and drove to the Bolshevik headquarters at the
Smolny Institute. This big building, formerly a school for the daughters
of the nobility, is now thick with the dirt of revolution. Sentries
and others tried to put me off, but I at length penetrated to the
third floor, where I saw the Secretary of the Military-Revolutionary
Committee (Vladimir
Antonov-Ovseenko)
and demanded that the women should be set free at once. He tried to
procrastinate, but I told him that if they were not liberated at once
I would set the opinion of the civilized world against the Bolsheviks.
Antonov-Ovseenko
tried soothe me and begged me to talk French instead of Russian, as
the waiting-room was crowded and we were attracting attention. He
himself talked excellent French and was evidently a man of education
and culture. Finally, after two visits to the adjoining room, where
he said the Council was sitting, he came back to say that the order
for the release would be signed at once.
I drove
with the officers to the Grenadersky barracks and went to see the
Regimental Committee. The commissar, a repulsive individual of Semitic
type, refused to release the women without a written order, on the
ground that "they had resisted to the last at the Palace, fighting
desperately with bombs and revolvers."
The Bolsheviks
in this instance were as good as their word. The order arrived at
the regiment soon after my departure, and the women were escorted
by a large guard to the Finland Station, where they left at 9 p.m.
for Levashovo, their battalion headquarters. As far as could be ascertained,
though they had been beaten and insulted in every way in the Pavlovsky
barracks and on their way to the Grenadersky Regiment, they were not
actually hurt in the barracks of the latter. They were, however, only
separated from the men's quarter by a barrier extemporized from beds,
and blackguards among the soldiery had shouted threats that had made
them tremble for the fate that the night might bring.
New women
recruits in Petrograd in 1917
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
