This month, Ukraine is celebrating two holidays: March 8—International Women’s Rights Day—and March 14—Ukrainian Volunteer Day. You might be surprised to learn that between 1914 and 1918, there were also quite a few female volunteers in Kharkiv, as well as women who successfully fought for their rights. That’s what we’ll be talking about today.
In the first months of the war, many women living in what was then the Russian Empire expressed a desire to join the active army. However, the government’s position on women’s participation in the war was extremely ambiguous at the time. On the one hand, female soldiers were considered an anomaly at the time, so the requests of many women in Kharkiv to be sent to the front were rejected, and those who violated this ban were arrested by the police. In our city’s media at the time, it was quite common to read stories like this one:
“Not long ago, A. I. Nikolaenko, an 18-year-old woman from the middle class, worked as a clerk at the ‘Kharkiv’ station. Nikolaenko was so consumed by the desire to do whatever she could to help her country that she decided to go to the theater of war. She quit her job, purchased a soldier’s uniform, and set out on her journey. She traveled by train to Kyiv, where she was detained by the gendarmerie. Nikolayenko is due to arrive in Kharkiv in the coming days to be reunited with her father.”
On the other hand, in 1914, those same Kharkiv media outlets were eagerly vying with one another to write enthusiastically about two brave female volunteer nurses. One of them found a “loophole” and made her way into the combat zone by traveling to the front with her husband as his driver. The other simply joined the ranks of the nurses.
Later on, the eldest of the sisters, Sofya Vladimirovna Fedorova of Kharkiv, became a truly legendary figure among women in the military. In his memoirs, Major General Vasily Vladimirovich Cheslavsky, a veteran of World War I, recalls the following about her:
“…Three young officers were standing nearby—orderlies from the division headquarters. It was already quite dark when I approached them to say hello, and, to my surprise, one of the orderlies turned out to be a young, pretty, slender, petite woman, dressed in an officer’s tunic with the epaulets of a private, blue chakchirs, and high boots with spurs. Peeking out from under her cap was a beautiful, chestnut-colored, tightly braided plait that fell down to the collar of her tunic.
This was Sofya Vladimirovna Fedorova, the wife of the captain of the 10th Odesa Uhlan Regiment. On the day of mobilization, she offered the division headquarters two of her expensive cars, on the condition that she be taken along on the campaign as a driver. To everyone’s surprise, the count agreed, and from that time on, Madame Fedorova tirelessly followed the division: she maintained the division’s communication with the army, delivered reports and brought back orders, evacuated the wounded, and transported ammunition. For a long time she worked by car, as long as the highway was passable, but when the division began maneuvering along country roads or directly across fields, Fedorova switched to a horse and became a tireless orderly, matching the officers in her work both on the march and in battle. Despite her pampered upbringing and accustomed to a life of luxury, she patiently and uncomplainingly endured all the hardships and deprivations of military life on the march: she often went hungry during heavy fighting or subsisted on hardtack and water; on numerous occasions, she slept under the open sky or on the floor of a shack, using a sheaf of straw as a pillow…”
Quite a few women from the Kharkiv Governorate served in the army on the “invisible front.” For example, in late September 1915, the head of the Intelligence Division of the General Staff of the Commander-in-Chief of the Southwestern Front was informed that “having fulfilled her assigned task of gathering intelligence on enemy forces in the vicinity of Libava,” an agent codenamed “Nana” had been discharged and was now living peacefully in the county town of Sumy in the Kharkiv Governorate. Through further research into archival documents concerning “Nana,” I was able to uncover the following.
- From May 22 to 29, 1915, she attended the “Agent School,” after which she began her service.
- “Nana’s” real name is Anna Vyacheslavovna Levandovskaya.
- Age: 44
- Place of birth: Riga.
- Place of residence: Sumy. “Nana’s” husband, Heinrich, her son Yaroslav (15), and her daughter Maria (14) also lived there.
- Religion: Catholic.
- Occupation: midwife.
Admittedly, Agent “Nana’s” time in the field was quite brief. From late May through late June 1915, she was “sent across the trenches to the outskirts of the cities of Mitava and Libava,” where she gathered intelligence on the locations of enemy military units stationed there. Upon her return to the territory of the Russian Empire, “Nana” began working in counterintelligence. However, as early as September 12, she was dismissed from service because she flatly refused to cross into enemy territory through the trenches. And, in the opinion of her superiors, she was of little use for counterintelligence operations themselves.
Among the women of Slobozhanshchina who became Red Cross nurses during the war, there were also many heroines. The first woman from Kharkiv to be awarded the St. George Medal “for selfless service on the front lines” was Olga Nikitichna Maslova, the daughter of a Kharkiv merchant and a former student of the 2nd Gymnasium, in 1915. Shortly thereafter, another Kharkiv nurse, Maria Pavlovna Karpova—a well-known philanthropist in her earlier years—was also awarded the same medal “for her work under enemy fire.”
However, it was precisely during the war years—given that most men were serving in the military—that women’s labor began to increasingly penetrate new industries, and women, who had previously faced discrimination, consequently gained civil rights. To understand why this happened, I will cite a few facts.
1) In the first year of the war alone, the army suffered losses of about 857,000 people, including 86,000 killed, 551,000 wounded or sick, and 220,000 missing in action or taken prisoner.
2) On average, over the course of five months of fighting, about 175,000 people were needed each month to replenish the ranks.
3) Over the course of the war, there were a total of 24 military drafts, during which approximately 15,800,000 men were mobilized.
Thus, while before the war, women’s manual labor in repairing railroad tracks was permitted only in extremely rare and exceptional cases, by 1915 groups of women and girls engaged in repair work were no longer a surprise to anyone.
In 1916, women in Kharkiv gained access to even more professions that had previously been off-limits to them. For example, in May, the first female conductor began working on the Kharkiv streetcar system. The press reaction at the time, incidentally, was quite positive:
“We can only welcome the employment of women in this field and hope that this initiative will continue to expand. In many cities—such as Kyiv, Kursk, and others—there are already quite a few female tram conductors, and, judging by observations of their work, they are perfectly capable of replacing men in this type of job.”
That summer, the first female porters began working at the South Station in Kharkiv. There were no complaints about their work either. Then, in the fall of that same year, the city administration decided to employ women on the Kharkiv tram line as well. About 20 women, as candidates for the position of conductor, were finally able to enroll in training courses. After completing their training and passing their exams, the young women began their work. Alas, we will never know the names of most of these Kharkiv heroines. After all, the vast majority of them worked day in and day out and selflessly fought for their rights—not on the front lines, but behind the scenes…
