The rarest photo of a female soldier of one of the volunteer women's battalions

The topic of women who served in the Russian army during the First World War has been studied extremely poorly to this day. The story of Antonina Tikhonovna Palshina, who took part in the battles and was awarded several soldiers' St. George awards, is well known, but she was far from the only one. By law, the presence of women in the military was not provided for. They were accepted only in military medical institutions of various public organizations (the Red Cross, the Union of Cities, etc.). As nurses, women could serve in hospitals and infirmaries of the military department. However, judging by the fragmentary data, many women served as volunteers in combat units. This phenomenon spread especially widely between February and October 1917 – the Bochkareva women's shock battalion and the women's naval team were only the most famous, but far from isolated cases. One example of this is this photo.

It clearly shows a woman's characteristic high-waisted physique, a face without the slightest signs of vegetation (at that time it was considered indecent for men to completely shave their face, usually only actors did this), small breasts, as well as small high-heeled boots "in a shot glass". The jacket and trousers of the "breeches" style are made to order from a light fabric of protective color. The style of the trousers successfully conceals the width of the hips, giving the lady a belligerent look.

The key detail of the photo is the date of donation indicated on the back of the photo (September 23, 1917) and the inscription "Mile – Nure", indicating the location of the shooting (Ackerman). "Mile" is an abbreviation of the female name Emilia. In this city, now called Belgorod-Dniester, a large number of troops of the Romanian Front formed in 1916 were located. The date in the picture also fully corresponds to the period of creation of the female death percussion units, which allows us to speak with a high degree of confidence about the belonging of one of these parts depicted in the photo. Postcard format. Guarantee of authenticity.

Women's battalions are military formations (shock women's "death battalions"), consisting exclusively of women, created by the Provisional Government, mainly for propaganda purposes — to raise patriotic sentiment in the army and shame by their own example male soldiers who refused to fight. Despite this, women's battalions participated in limited combat operations of the First World War. One of the initiators of their creation was Maria Bochkareva.

Senior non-commissioned officer M. L. Bochkareva, who was at the front with the Highest permission (since women were forbidden to be sent to units of the active army) since 1914, by 1917, thanks to her heroism, she became a famous person. M. V. Rodzianko, who arrived in April with an agitation trip to the Western Front, where M. L. Bochkareva served, He specifically asked for a meeting with her and took her with him to Petrograd to agitate for a "war to the bitter end" in the troops of the Petrograd garrison and among the delegates of the Congress of soldiers' deputies of the Petrograd Soviet. In a speech to the delegates of the congress, Bochkareva spoke for the first time about the creation of shock women's "death battalions". After that, she was invited to present her proposal at a meeting of the Provisional Government.

First of all, female servicemen from front-line units were enrolled in the ranks of the "shockwomen" (there were a small number of female servicemen in the Russian Imperial Army, the presence in the army of each of whom was approved by the Highest permission, among them there were even St. George cavaliers), but also women from civil society - noblewomen, college students, teachers, workers. The proportion of soldiers and Cossacks was large. Bochkareva's battalion featured both girls from the famous noble families of Russia, as well as simple peasant women and servants. Maria Skrydlova, the daughter of Admiral N. I. Skrydlov, served as Bochkareva's adjutant. By nationality, the female volunteers were mostly Russian, but there were also Estonians, Latvians, Jews, and an Englishwoman among them. The number of women's formations ranged from 250 to 1,500 people.

The appearance of the Bochkareva detachment served as an impulse to form women's detachments in other cities of the country (Kiev, Minsk, Poltava, Kharkov, Simbirsk, Vyatka, Smolensk, Irkutsk, Baku, Odessa, Mariupol), but due to the increasing processes of destruction of the Russian state, the creation of these women's shock units was never completed.

Officially, as of October 1917, there were: the 1st Petrograd Women's Death Battalion, the 2nd Moscow Women's Death Battalion, the 3rd Kuban Women's Shock Battalion (infantry); the Naval Women's Team (Oranienbaum); the Cavalry 1st Petrograd Battalion of the Women's Military Union; the Minsk separate guard squad of women volunteers. The first three battalions visited the front, only the 1st battalion of Bochkareva participated in the fighting.