Soviet Sniper: The Memoirs of Roza Shanina

By Roza Shanina and John Walter

The diary of the Soviet World War II sniper known as the “unseen terror of East Prussia” who killed 59 enemy soldiers before dying heroically at age 20.

Roza Shanina was celebrated for her remarkable shooting accuracy and astonishing bravery. Volunteering for military service after the death of her brother in 1941, she fought her way to the frontline and became a key player in a number of major battles. With 59 confirmed Nazi kills, she became the first servicewoman of the 3rd Belorussian Front to receive the Order of Glory.

Although it was strictly forbidden within the Soviet military to keep a combat diary, Shanina managed to maintain hers throughout the last 4 months of her life. In it, she describes the hardships, triumphs, mundanities and extremities of war, the relationships formed and the comrades lost. Translated into English for the first time, the diary is a rare insight into the complexities of what is was to be both a sniper and a woman on the frontline and stands as a testament to Shanina’s humor, determination, extraordinary courage and indefatigable spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781784385866

Book preview

ROZA SHANINA

SOVIET SNIPER

The Memoirs of

Roza Shanina

Foreword by

John Walter

Translated by

David Foreman

Published by

Greenhill Books,

c/o Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

47 Church Street, Barnsley,

S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS

www.greenhillbooks.com

[e-mail]

All rights reserved.

John Walter introduction © Greenhill Books, 2020

David Foreman English language translation

© Greenhill Books, 2020

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78438-586-6 (ePub)

Kindle Edition: 978-1-78438-587-3 (mobi)

Foreword

by John Walter

Unternehmen Barbarossa, the German invasion on 22 June 1941, was a disaster for the USSR. Poor leadership by commanders who paid as much attention to politics as strategy ensured that there was no concerted response. Mobilisation was chaotic; tanks and aircraft were all too often destroyed before they had time to engage the enemy. Many units fought and died where they stood; others, however, saw discretion as the better part of valour and withdrew - only to face the wrath of their political masters and the punishment reserved for cowards or traitors. Casualties were horrendous and the German advance seemed inexorable. Yet thousands of volunteers rushed immediately to defend the Motherland, and the ranks of combatants swelled as the months and then years passed. Among them was Roza Shanina, who enlisted in 1943 aged just 19.

Background

In 1931, the Central Committee of the Communist Party had ordered that basic military training, including marksmanship, should be mandatory for all boys and girls who entered elementary school. This involved the ‘Little Oktobrists’, aged 7-9, and the ‘Young Pioneers’ (10-15) who could then join Komsomol.

Efforts were also made to recruit men and women who had undergone training with the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League, Vsesoyaznyy Leninskiy Kommunisticheskiy Soyuz Molodskiy (Komsomol or VLKSM), founded on 29 October 1918 and disbanded only in 1991 after the USSR had collapsed. Many leading snipers came through its ranks prior to 1945, including Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the best-scoring female sniper of the Second World War, and Roza Shanina.

Soyuz obshchestv Sodeystiya oborone i aviatsionno- khimicheskomvu stroitelstvu CCCP (Union of Societies of Assistance to the Defence and Aviation-Chemical Construction of the USSR - Osoaviakhim) had been created on 27 January 1927 by amalgamating three separate agencies. Its remit included providing trained recruits for the armed forces: by 1928, there were 2,500 shooting ranges, and 5,297 ‘Shooting Circles’ with 230,000 participants. Introduced on 29 October 1932 to replace a variety of old badges and awards, Osoaviakhim’s Voroshilov Badge had a junior and two senior stages. More than 36,000 graduated in the first year; and, at the 1936 Voroshilov Rally, 215,000 trainees were recruited.

Formed in 1918 in the wake of the October Revolution, Vsevobuch (Vseobschey Voennoe Obuchenie, ‘universal military training programme’) was abandoned in 1923. In June 1941, however, immediately after the German invasion, the programme was reactivated to provide a minimum of 110 hours of marksmanship and similar instruction for civilians over the age of 16. Almost ten million people graduated from Vsevobuch training courses between 1 October 1941 and 8 May 1945.

Women at war

The constitution of the USSR conferred equality regardless of gender, but this was largely ignored in the male-dominated army. In times of war, women were expected to become medical orderlies, drive supply trucks, or type letters.

Exactly how many volunteered or were conscripted into wartime service is still argued, largely owing to the absence of detailed records. An analysis by Colonel-General Grigory Krivosheev (editor), Grif sekretnosti snyat: Poteri vooruzhennykh sil SSSR v voinakh, boevykh deistviyakh i voennykh konfliktakh (‘Tragic secrecy lifted: the USSR Armed Forces losses in wars, hostilities and military conflicts’, 1993), published in English in 1997 as Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century, suggests that 490,235 women were ‘called up’.

Even though this total was subsequently revised in 2001 to 570,000, 463,503 of whom were active on 1 January 1945, it still excludes many of those who had volunteered or fought with the partisans. Consequently, estimates as high as 800,000 are not uncommon - e.g. Vera Semenova Murmantseva, in Zhenshchiny v soldatskikh shineliakh (1971) - though it is usually conceded that only about 500,000 served in the front line. Semenova also suggested in Sovetskie zhehshchiny v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine 1941-1945 that Vsevobuch trained at least 100,000 markswomen, but perhaps no more than 10,000 of these ever saw combat as snipers.

Attempts by individuals to exploit prewar marksmanship qualifications to enter service were generally thwarted by voenkomaty, military commissariats functioning as draft boards, which were manned all too often by old soldiers who saw no use for women in the front line. In addition, there were no national registers of women eligible for military service - a respect in which Komsomol records proved to be much more useful.

Lyudmila Pavlichenko was just one who encountered rejection; Nina Petrova was another; and many other markswomen found their way blocked for a variety of reasons. However, they were to make huge contributions to the defeat of Hitler’s Germany. Pavlichenko, with 309 accredited kills, ranks among the most effective snipers of all time. Roza Shanina, Natalya Kovshova and Mariya Polivanova have all attracted their share of attention - not least because all three lost their lives - but at least 45 women are known to have more than 60 kills to their name.

Rise of the sniper

The first attempts to train snipers in large numbers were apparently made by NKVD forces defending Leningrad immediately after the German invasion, among the many individuals credited with the introduction of in-service training schemes being Feodosy Smalyachov, a teenager who began a people’s movement in the autumn of 1941. Credited with 125 kills from 126 shots, to universal disbelief outside the USSR, Smalyachov did not live to see the effects his inspiration had on the course of the war.

There was no shortage of recruits as Osoaviakhim and Vsevobuch had prepared millions of men