The Bridgeville Area Historical Society opened the new year with one of its rare Sunday afternoon programs. The speaker was a young lady named Dana del Bianco who specialized in studying Stalinism, at Carnegie Mellon University. Her subject was a Soviet hero of World War II, Roza Shanina, a decorated sniper.
Miss Shanina was born in Yedna, Russia, in 1924, and educated at a pedagogical college in Archangelsk, Siberia. She was working in a kindergarten when war broke out and she joined the Red Army.
Women were treated as equals in the Soviet Union; it is not a surprise that they were the only country to employ women in combat during the Second World War. At least one hundred thousand Russian women saw combat in that conflict.
A special assignment for women was as a sniper. The Red Army was convinced they were especially well equipped for this unique role. As many as 2,500 Russian women served as snipers; five hundred of them survived the war.
Miss Shanina entered the service in June, 1943, following the death of her brother in action. She was immediately identified as a potential sniper and did so well in training that she became an instructor at that academy. Her persistent requests for combat eventually resulted in an assignment as leader of a female sniper platoon in the 184th Rifle division in April 1944, just in time to join a counter-offensive near Vitebsk.
She immediately distinguished herself by killing seventeen German soldiers “while subjected to artillery and machine gun fire”. She was rewarded by receiving the Order of Glory, Third Class, and having her portrait displayed on the front page of the Soviet newspaper “Unichtozhim”.
Her platoon then joined Operation Bagration which eventually drove the enemy out of Russia, across Lithuania, and into East Prussia, with major victories at Vilnius, Kaunus, and Konigsberg. Sergeant Shanina’s “kill” total reached fifty before she suffered a wound in her shoulder that took her out of action in December.
After a fast recovery she was back at the front by January 8, 1945, just in time to learn that she had been awarded a second medal. This time it was the Order of Glory Second Class. With it came additional national publicity.
The speaker presented a number of photographs of the sniper, all apparently posed. They show a remarkably photogenic young blonde lady, sporting a dimpled smile. In each of them she is displaying her medals on her chest and is holding her rifle.
Her weapon was a classic Mosin-Nagant rifle equipped with a 3.5 power telescope. It is a repeating gun with a five cartridge, bolt operated magazine. The cartridges were thirty caliber (7.62 mm). Originally developed in 1891, it is in many ways comparable to the American 30-06.
Seeing the medals reminded me of a cartoon character in some long-forgotten comic strip of the 1940s – a Russian military officer whose chest was completely draped with medals, exactly like the ones in Miss Shanina’s photographs.
Ms. del Bianco made her presentation in a replica uniform very similar to the one in the photographs – neat cap, brown jacket complete with medals, dark skirt, and high boots. We assume this was a dress uniform, not the sniper’s regular work clothes.
Roza Shanina was certainly a prime subject for the Soviet propaganda machine. The contrast between her angelic appearance and her achievements as a killer is ironic. If someone as innocent looking as this child can be converted into a cold-blooded killer, surely the USSR must prevail.
Her fame was short lived. On January 27, 1945, she was severely injured by an artillery shell. She died a day later. Based on the notoriety of her publicity it is conceivable that she had been targeted by the enemy.
During the war, correspondent Pyotr Molcnanov was involved in publicizing Miss Shanina’s exploits. When she died he acquired her diary, a set of notebooks she kept during the last four months of her life. They were published in 1965, generating a renewed interest in her career, as well as a number of posthumous honors.
During her presentation the speaker frequently inserted statements verbatim from Miss Shanina’s Diary. Taken out of context they present several different aspects of her personality.
For example, “If you know how passionately I want to be at the front and kill Nazis” suggests that she is evil, a cold-blooded assassin. Similarly, “Solid hit on Fritz at a distance of 20 meters and clearly killed 15, maybe more. Good hunting for us two – 35 Krauts” sounds like the everyday journal of someone doing his/her job.
A thorough reading of the Diary, however, paints a dramatically different picture. Roza Shanina comes across as a prototypical young single woman, beset with social problems and stuck in a job full of highs and lows. One suspects that her sudden fame as a Soviet hero was difficult for her to handle.
One wonders what she was really like. The contrast between behaving like a comic strip character in a 1945 issue of “War Comics” and acting like a character in a TV sitcom (“Friends?”) is dramatic.
It is also easy to reflect on the many aspects of war. At one extreme is the impersonal attitude of a bomber pilot dropping bombs on an unknown target or a gunner on a battleship loading shells into a sixteen-inch cannon aimed at a shore miles away. The other extreme is the sniper, spotting her target in her telescopic sight and watching him crumble when her slug hits him.
After Jumonville Glen, Washington reported there was “something charming in the sound” of bullets in a battle. Robert E. Lee commented that “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow fond of it”. More profound than either was William Tecumseh Sherman, “War is Hell”.
The Society’s next program meeting is scheduled for Sunday, February 23, 2020, at 1:30, in the Chartiers Room of the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Department. Dr. John Aupperle’s subject will be “The Matriarch: A Life of Barbara Bush”.