Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko

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Lyudmila Pavlitschenko (ca.1943)

Lyudmila Michailowna Pavlitschenko ( Russian Людмила Михайловна Павличенко , scientific transliteration Lyudmila Michajlovna Pavličenko ; born July 12, 1916 in Bila Tserkva ; † October 10, 1974 in Moscow ) was a Soviet sniper . With 309 confirmed hits, she is one of the most efficient snipers of World War II and is considered the most successful female sniper of all time.

Life before the war

Pavlitschenko (born Belova) was born as an ethnic Russian on July 12, 1916 in Bila Tserkva , Ukraine , and moved with her family to Kiev at the age of 14 . There she became a member of a rifle club and trained as a sniper while working as a grinder in the arsenal factory. In 1937, as a student at the University of Kiev, she successfully defended her master's thesis on Bohdan Khmelnyzkyj .

Second World War

Soviet postage stamp from 1943

In June 1941, when National Socialist Germany launched the raid on the Soviet Union under the code name Enterprise Barbarossa , Pavlitschenko was 24 years old and studied history at the University of Kiev . She volunteered at the front and was assigned to the 25th Rifle Division. This made her one of around 2,000 female snipers in the Red Army , of which only around 500 survived the war. She shot her first two enemy soldiers with a Mosin-Nagant repeating rifle during an execution near the Belyayevka settlement. When she shot the two Romanians, she was accepted. However, the two were not included in their killing statistics - after all, they were only "test shots".

Pavlichenko fought for around two and a half months near Odessa , where their shots killed 187 opposing soldiers. When the Germans took control of Odessa, their unit was withdrawn to Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula . By May 1942 she was already a lieutenant and was honored by the leadership of the Southern Army for killing 257 Axis soldiers. Their deadly record is 309 enemy soldiers.

In June 1942 Pavlichenko was wounded by a mortar shell . She recovered, but less than a month after the famous woman returned to the front, she was withdrawn from the mission because the army leadership feared that the soldiers would have a demoralizing effect if she died.

She was sent on a public relations trip to Canada and the United States and became the first female Soviet citizen to be received at the White House by a US President - Franklin D. Roosevelt . Pavlichenko later traveled through North America with Eleanor Roosevelt to share their combat experiences. She gave a speech to an international student union in Washington, DC and appeared at the CIO union in New York . During her visit to Canada with two other snipers - Vladimir Pechelinsev and Nikolai Krasavchenko - she was received by thousands in Toronto at Union Station .

On her return to the Soviet Union, she was promoted to major . Until the end of the war she remained a trainer for Soviet snipers.

After the war

Soviet postage stamp from 1976

After the war she graduated from Kiev University and worked as a historian and in the Soviet Navy . She later worked for the Soviet War Veterans Committee.

Pavlichenko died on October 10, 1974 at the age of 58 and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.

Appreciation

In 1943 she received the Golden Star of the Heroes of the Soviet Union and was honored on a Soviet postage stamp .

Two years after her death, another Soviet postage stamp appeared in her honor, and a Ukrainian cargo ship was named after her. There is a street named after her in Sevastopol.

The American folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote a song in her honor entitled "Miss Pavlichenko" and thus increased her popularity. The text contains, among other things, the verses: "The whole world will love her for a long time to come / For more than three hundred nazis fell by your gun" (German for example: "The whole world will love her for a long time / because more." than 300 Nazis fell by your rifle ”).

The Ukrainian-Russian film by director Sergueï Mokritskiy from 2015 Red Sniper is about her life and is one of the most successful cinema productions of 2015 in both countries.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lady Sniper. In: Time Magazine , September 28, 1942 (English, beginning of article freely available ).
  2. ^ Gilbert King: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper. In: Smithsonian Magazine . February 21, 2013, accessed October 14, 2018 . Heziel Pitogo: Lyudmila Pavlichenko The Most Succesful Female Sniper Ever With 309 Kills. In: War History Online. October 15, 2015, accessed October 14, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Павличенко Людмила Михайлівна. In: peremoga.gov.ua. 2004, archived from the original on June 28, 2009 ; Retrieved October 14, 2018 (Ukrainian).
  4. ↑ Arthur Bernard Cook (ed.): Women and War: A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present , Volume 1. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara / Denver / Oxford, 2006, ISBN 978-1-85109-770-8 , p 457.
  5. ↑ Linda Hinz: "After that nothing could stop me": "Lady Death": This Soviet sniper killed 309 soldiers of Hitler. In: Focus Online . April 12, 2015, accessed October 14, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Kazimiera J [ean] Cottam: Selected Biographies of Soviet Women Soldiers.
  7. ↑ Ярослав Сингаївський (Jaroslaw Singaiwskij): Всевидющий снайпер. In: Газета АКБ Промінвестба. July 22, 2004, archived from the original on March 11, 2007 ; Retrieved October 14, 2018 (Ukrainian).
  8. ↑ Улицы Севастополя: Улица Людмилы Павличенко. In: sevastopol.info. Retrieved October 14, 2018 (Russian).
  9. ↑ Quoted here from Pete Seeger (ed.): Woody Guthrie Folk Songs. London 1973, pp. 88-89.
    Manfred Helfert: Miss Pavlichenko (Woody Guthrie) (1940s). In: woodyguthrie.de. Retrieved October 14, 2018 (English, full lyrics).

literature

Web links

Commons : Lyudmila Pavlichenko  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Pavlichenko, Lyudmila Mikhailovna
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Павличенко, Людмила Михайловна (Russian); Pavličenko, Lyudmila Michajlovna (transliteration)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Soviet sniper
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Bila Tserkva
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1974
Place of death Moscow