An Oral History of Women in World War II - The Unwomanly Face of War

Svetlana Alexievich's book, "The Unwomanly Face of War," is about Russian women's lives on the front in World War II. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky were the book's translators. The author was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature for "polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time." This book chronicled historic accounts of various Russian women on the front line against the Nazis during World War II. The author traveled around Russia and the former Soviet Union from 1978 to 1985 in capturing the anguish and the horror of war.

This book begins with an introduction like "From a Conversation with a Historian" and "A Human Being is Greater Than War." There are chapters titled "I Don't Want to Remember;" "Grow Up Girls…You're Still Green;" "I Alone Came back to Mama;" "Two Wars Live in Our House;" "Telephones Don't Shoot;" "They Awarded Us Little Medals;" "It Wasn't Me…;" "I Remember Those Eyes Even Now;" "We Didn't Shoot;" "They Needed Soldiers….But We Also Wanted to Be Beautiful;" "Young Ladies! Do You Know, The Commander of a Sapper Platoon Lives Only Two Months;" "To See Him Just Once;" "About Tiny Potatoes…;" "Mama, What's A Papa?;" "And She Puts Her Hand to Her Heart…" and "Suddenly We Wanted to Desperately To Live."

The book's writing style has the oral historic accounts of these women's lives. There are so many women from different parts of the former Soviet Union. They all have heartbreaking stories of fighting for their country. They left their children with relatives and friends while they went to fight. The men in their lives were also fighting on the front against the Nazis. Their stories have rendered me speechless at times. I couldn't imagine what they did during World War II. They were too busy saving their country to remember their gender. During World War II, Soviet Union had lost twenty seven million lives.

The book also describes the world in Soviet Union at the time. There was starvation, devastation, fires, murders, deaths and bodies (lots of corpses) around. This book is a horrific true account of oral history told by one of Russian's best known journalists and authors. She captured the women who went on to live various lives around the country. Alexievich's historic account must be read for World War II and Russian classes at a college level or for general interest.

It has taken Svetlana Alexievich almost 40 years to get the book she wanted to write about the experiences of Russian women in WWII into the hands of English speaking readers. She began collecting the stories in 1978. The initial edition of the book included many cuts she made herself to get it past the Soviet-era censors and more which they required. All of these excisions have been restored and the translation has been given to the celebrated translator couple Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear. The result is a spectacular collection of memories many of which the individuals themselves had suppressed in what they refer to as the second war - the war of truth and recognition the ex female combatants faced returning to a society that only wanted to remember Victory.

The Russian contribution to and sacrifice in what they call the Great Patriotic War was on a scale almost impossible to imagine. Three books help convey some of this and make essential reading. If you want to understand the scale of the Russian military contribution and how war ebbed and flowed across thousands of kilometres, read Russia's War by Richard Overy. If you want to understand the intensity of the conflict and the human contribution read Ivan's War by Catherine Merridale and if you want to really understand what war feels like read The Unwomanly Face of War.

There is no real structure to the accounts Alexievich has gathered - few dates and recognizable places are provided. Instead you have the voices of hundreds of women, telling their stories in their own individual ways. Some are almost incoherent, others wonderfully eloquent. Many are bitter and deeply tragic, others simply matter of fact. Through all this the courage, the sacrifice, the nobility of spirit and the camaraderie are overwhelming. The result is a totally immersive experience, shocking to start in the horrifyingly frank accounts of the battlefield, but then affirming and restorative. Justice has been done, voices heard and lives now honoured for all time. Thank you Svetlana Alexievich.

Svetlana Alexievich was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize for literature. ‘The Unwomanly face of War’ has been translated by star Russian to American-English translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, and is being published in the re-vamped Penguin Classics series. That constitutes three good reasons to pay this book some attention.

The author inserts her own voice from time to time, but for the most part her book consists of extracts of letters from and interviews with women who took active combat or supporting roles in the Red Army during World War 2.

It would seem that most of the reminiscences were collected in the 1980s. Impossible as it would be to check the truth of all that Alexievich was told, it would be hard to doubt the authenticity of the great majority of individual contributions.

Most of the contributors were very young in the war years, typically 18 to early twenties, with some even younger and lying about their age to be accepted by the recruiting offices. Many had to be very persistent in their determination to join the Red Army, especially in front line operations.

Alexievich writes: ‘Women’s stories are different and about different things. “Women’s” war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. Its own words. There are no heroes and incredible feats, there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.’

More than a few of the women were involved in medical services, often accompanying the troops into battle so as to bandage the wounded on the spot, or recover them from the battlefield even whilst they were still under fire.

‘a wounded man called to me: “Bandage my leg!” His leg was torn off, hanging out of the trouser leg. I cut the trouser leg off: “Put my leg down! Put it beside me.” I did. If they’re conscious, they won’t give up their arm or leg. They take it along. And if they’re dying, they ask that it be buried with them.’

One woman describes moving forward into battle clinging to the outside of a tank. More than one makes mention of the epic 1943 tank battle at Kursk and of the horrific injuries suffered when a tank was hit and set on fire. One was at the battle for Stalingrad; a couple more were involved in relieving Leningrad during the 872 day blockade.

One was a tank driver. Others served as snipers, sappers, anti-aircraft gunners and pilots, and in many liaison and communication roles that took them close to the front line. There were cooks and laundresses too, even a hairdresser. A surprising number were given positions of command over men as well as women, which in some cases involved riding horses to get around.

Men’s haircuts were the norm, and men’s clothing and boots – often several sizes too big. Ladies’ underwear was in short supply; considerable ingenuity was used in making-up for the lack of it, often involving the traditional Russian soldier’s footcloth still in general use at that time.

The masculine appearance of the young women with their short hair and standard military uniforms may explain why suggestions of sexual relations or abuse are few and far between; or perhaps that is more a reflection of the reticence of that generation about such matters. The rape of German women in the last stages of the war – understood from other sources to have taken place on a horrific scale – is also mostly passed over, but does receive some acknowledgement, along with the vandalism and looting of German houses and dispatch back to the Soviet Union of items taken.

The neat white houses with tiled roofs and flower gardens seen in Germany contrasted strongly with the total destruction of villages in the Soviet Union. We are prepared for that to some extent before the troops arrive in Germany by descriptions of villages on the steppe almost totally obliterated, but for the odd Russian stove remaining where a cottage had been.

Towards the end of the book, the activities of the partisans in Belorussia are given good coverage – Alexievich is herself Belorussian.

And on returning home at war’s end:
‘There was no one I could tell that I had been wounded, that I had a concussion. Try telling it, and who will give you a job then, who will marry you? We were silent as fish. We never acknowledged to anyone that we had been at the front… It was later that they began to honor us, thirty years later … to invite us to meetings … But back then we hid, we didn’t even wear our medals. Men wore them, but not women. Men were victors, heroes, wooers, the war was theirs, but we were looked at with quite different eyes… they robbed us of the victory. They quietly exchanged it for ordinary women’s happiness… It was painful … Incomprehensible … Because at the front men treated us marvelously well, they always protected us. I’ve never encountered such an attitude toward women in peaceful life.’

For years, I was hoping this book (originally published over 30 years ago as “War’s Unwomanly Face”) would be re-published in English. The significant contribution of Soviet women to the Great Patriotic War is an important part of modern history that is mostly ignored, misunderstood or dismissed in Western culture. I found Svetlana Alexiavich’s poetic method of presenting these women’s stories (in their own words) both haunting, heart-wrenching and insightful. This is a book that clearly evokes the dire situation of the Soviet experience of World War II … a war of annihilation.

As an American, World War II has traditionally been presented as “the good war or “a necessary war”. Studying the Eastern Front of World War II for decades has given me a keen sense of how fortunate it was that such a devastating conflict was fought “over there” and how American towns, cities and citizens were spared the cataclysmic destruction the Soviet Union experienced for almost four years. This book illustrates a truly unique aspect of Soviet Union’s war against Nazi Germany … the impact that war had on the women who volunteered to fight alongside men in the bloodiest conflict in human history.

It is estimated that over a million females participated, often on the front lines, in the Great Patriotic War and many of those were in their mid-to-late teens … still little girls. Rather than simply documenting the experiences, Alexievich lets these women speak for themselves. What makes the book so interesting and deep is that it is not merely storytelling, but scraps of significant and deeply emotional moments that permanently stained the lives and memories of each and every individual Alexievich interviewed. She delicately presents these individual thoughts and memories in a manner that allows readers to feel the personal devastation and loss experienced by many of the women. It presents a visage of death and destruction on a level that is relatively impossible for many of us to fathom. Many of these women recount the loss of entire families to the war or witnessing the deaths of children and the elderly to unimaginable circumstances (like children being run over by German tanks). The recollections are extremely personal and oftentimes gory as many of these women served in the medical field and were responsible for tending to the wounded on the front line. The wartime roles of these women varied; they served as pilots, snipers, sappers, partisans, nurses, machine gunners and tank drivers … many were wounded and many killed the enemy. There are numerous accounts of love and lost love, often with the men they fought alongside … these stories are oftentimes both romantic and tragic. It was easy to sense that the war forced the youngest of those interviewed to mature in short order by experiencing a lifetime before adulthood.

What struck me the most about the memories of these women is that while dealing with the misery of a “man’s world” filled with filth, gore and general misery, many of them treasured moments where they could be women. These were instances where they had an opportunity to extricate themselves from a world of men and focus on their femininity … whether it be fixing their hair or donning heels for a brief moment. Their accounts generate an understanding that most were accepted and respected as valued brothers and sisters-in-arms … unified by the commitment to defeat an enemy that wreaked havoc on all of their lives. These recollections of seeing death on such a large scale are often followed by comments indicating the war was a period of their lives in which they were the most alive. Their collective memories often highlight moments of noticing a sprig of greenery sprouting in a sea of mud, the sun shining, the vivid colors of cloth that weren’t designed to camouflage … an appreciation of insignificant things that represent life, not death. Ironically, many of the women account for the war years as being both the best and worst years of their lives. But, they all bear wounds, both physical and emotional … like one partisan who fought deep in the forests is terrified by forests today.

Reading THE UNWOMANLY FACE OF WAR was truly an enjoyable experience and I’m so glad it was re-published; the original was released under the Soviet system and was heavily censored. The book also makes me think of how fortunate American women (and Americans in general) truly are.

Svetlana Alexievich has a specific style that she replicates throughout her volumes. She gives voice to women who have lived in “interesting” times. Whether it is war or the breakup of the Soviet Union and the beginning of a “capitalist” and “democratic” Russia, the women Alexievich interviews offer a compelling, raw narrative that often forces readers to stop and contemplate a world they never experienced. The general readers’ lack of familiarity with not only war but the genocidal and total war nature of the struggle on the Soviet-German front will force them to step out of their comfort zones and contemplate events and actions that all too often seem as if they belong outside the realm of the possible. In this text, readers are exposed to the events of the Second World War through the eyes of female combatants and military personnel.

The campaigns, battles, commanding officers, equipment, and often enough the patriotic and selfless spirit that moved many to run away to the front or volunteer for service did not differ from men to women. Neither did the pain and trauma both sexes experienced at the front. Women readily fulfilled frontline roles, such as snipers, tankers, of infantry(wo)men and participated in the partisan war in the enemy’s rear; the latter convey some of the most heartrending recollections offered by those who took part in the partisan struggle where rules of war too often ceased to exist.

However, what many women chose to remember, to concentrate on in order to define their wartime service offers an additional layer to our understanding of the Soviet war experience in general terms. Additionally, many of the positions women fulfilled in the Red Army lack an equivalent male voice as women dominated them. Nurses, who served both in hospitals in the rear and on the frontlines and were required to evacuate the wounded from the field of battle (even from burning or damaged tanks), make up a large portion of the reminiscences in this text. They give voice to the many wounded, dying, and dead that made up the millions of casualties, male and female, sustained by the Red Army. Additionally, bakers, postal workers, clerks, laundresses, construction workers, mechanics, supply personnel and numerous other positions that would hardly ever merit an anthology of recollections are included. Although these women did not see the frontline as often as others might, they nonetheless provided both the Red Army and every soldier at the front with needed supplies and support.

These veterans of a genocidal conflict we hope the world will never experience again offer an emotionally laden representation of the sights and sounds of war. From the roar of artillery to the anguished screams of the wounded and dying. Readers will encounter recollections that will consistently challenge what they know about the Soviet-German war. These women experienced lack of sleep, physical exertion, ill-fitting uniforms, heavy weapons, misogyny, tears, blood, iodine, chloroform, excrement, the raw emotions of love and hatred. They struggled on a daily basis as they gambled with their lives to see what fate awaited them the next day, hour, minute, or heartbeat. While war might not have a womanly face, women without a doubt helped achieve victory and suffered for their sacrifices both during the war and long after.

This extraordinary book tells the true stories of women who volunteered for service in defense of the USSR in WWII. Many served as soldiers, and worked as snipers, tank drivers, sappers, and medics in battle. Others were nurses and doctors. Like Alexievich's other works, the book consists of excerpts from the author's interviews with these women (& the occasional man, who insisted on injecting himself into the conversation!) about their memories of the war. The first person accounts remind us of the enormous loss of life suffered by the USSR on its way to ultimate victory, and of the suffering and near starvation of those who survived. We are also reminded of the extreme brutality of the Nazis, who were not content to murder every civilian in a town, but followed up the murders by burning the towns down. Thousands who survived the war had no homes to return to because the Nazis had destroyed every home and building that was in their path.

Alexievich's subjects ponder their loyalty to the Motherland and Stalin, despite having known about his show trials and purges during the 1930's. Stalin's purges ironically made the USSR's task in WWII more difficult because Stalin had sent to death so many of his competent military leaders. Even women with relatives who had been exiled somewhere in the Gulag persisted in their faith and belief in Stalin, though, in retrospect, from the view of several decades later, they find their loyalty then to be puzzling.

In many ways, due to several decades of Communism, women in the USSR were better prepared to take on "man's work" USSR, than in other Allied countries. For example, many female doctors already existed. Despite the existence of more flexiblity in gender roles, after the war, the women who had served on the front lines were often disrespected and distrusted for years.

I could not put this book down. As the author makes clear in the opening, when men reflect on war, they talk about maps, weapons, strategies, and battles; when women remember their war times, they speak of personal experiences and feelings. Thank you Svetlana Alexievich for having the wisdom to record these survivors' memories.

During World War II, many women in Soviet Russia went off to war, not just in the traditional female roles of nurses, cooks, etc., but to take up arms themselves – to kill or die for their country. When they came home – those who came home – they were not lauded as heroines. At best their service was forgotten; at worst, they were seen as unwomanly, no longer suitable marriage material, sometimes even shunned by those around them. Decades later in 1985, as Soviet Russia was about to enter the period of glasnost (openess) under then President Gorbachev, Svetlana Alexievich published this collection of oral histories from some of the women who served. For her ground-breaking work, including this book, Alexievich, a Belarusian journalist, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. This is a new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the current leaders in the field of Russian-English translation.

There is no doubt of the importance of this work in bringing a piece of the Soviet Union's lesser-known history to light, and for giving a voice to many women who had been silenced by their society's desire to forget their contribution. Many of the memories Alexievich records show the patriotism and courage of these women, while also giving an insight into their naivety as they set off for “the Front” - words that seem almost to have taken on an element of propaganda, as something glorious and heroic. The reality, of course, was brutal and barbaric. Alexievich tries to understand why so many women – girls, in many cases, often only sixteen or seventeen – were determined to cut off their cherished braids, learn to shoot or fly or bandage wounds, and set off for war.

The answers were as varied as the girls themselves. Some went against the opposition of their mothers, because they had lost a father or brother or lover and wanted revenge. Some saw it as a great patriotic duty. Some were more or less forced into it by parents who had no sons to send, or who had already lost their sons in the carnage. Some went simply because their friends were going. Some, and these were the saddest, saw it as an exciting adventure. Often the recruiting officers tried to talk them out of it, but the girls were determined to go – I formed the distinct impression it had simply become the 'done thing', a kind of macabre fashion statement. When they got there, the men they were to serve with often saw them at first as an annoyance – just another thing they needed to worry about. But many of these girls soon became vital cogs in an army that was losing men in almost unimaginable numbers. Alexievich lets us hear from snipers, girls who worked dragging the injured from burning tanks, women who flew war planes or manned their guns, surgeons who worked through extreme exhaustion to treat a never-ending stream of men and women with horrific injuries, nurses who tried to give some comfort to those in agony, waiting for death.

I had some reservations though, mainly around Alexievich's intentions. Apparently she interviewed hundreds of women and received written accounts from many more. At the beginning of each section, she gives a little introduction telling the story of how she collected and selected her material, and it was these that made me wonder about her agenda. She becomes emotional to the point of mawkishness again and again, often inserting herself into the middle of a memory to show how deeply it has affected her. She admits immediately to being obsessed with death, and I felt it became clear quite quickly that she also had what felt like an unhealthy, voyeuristic obsession with suffering. She makes plain – though I'm not sure intentionally – that she dismissed memories that didn't meet her criteria. So women who wanted to talk about pride in the eventual victory rather than suffering were dismissed, with it being signalled that they had been indoctrinated by men to think about the 'man's' war rather than the 'woman's'.

I couldn't help but feel that she was very close to distorting history to suit her agenda – to prove that women suffer more, have bigger hearts, more capacity for empathy, find it harder to kill. True? Perhaps. Or perhaps some form of reverse sexism. We live now in a world where women regularly serve on front lines – in some countries it has been the norm for decades, if not centuries – and I doubt if our female soldiers would relish being portrayed as somehow less fitted for war, or that the many men who live with ongoing emotional trauma are happy to be considered less feeling. I also felt that Alexievich's sympathy for the women only lasted until it interfered with her work. I was particularly put off by one anecdote she recounts, when she sent a transcript to a woman she had interviewed. The woman scored out some personal stuff and said her son would be horrified to read it, since she had never told him. But Alexievich overrode the woman's objections and printed it anyway, carefully including the woman's full name. It felt as abusive as anything the society she is criticising had done to the women.

Some of the extracts are intensely moving, some so horrifying they are difficult to read. Others left me curiously untouched – repetition dulls the senses perhaps. Eventually I found I was having to force myself to pick the book up, so finally gave up at about two-thirds of the way through. I do think this is a valuable contribution to the historical record, but one that needs to be viewed with a certain amount of caution as having been too carefully selected to bolster the author's viewpoint, rather than to give an unbiased and balanced platform for the memories of the women who served.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Penguin Classics.

I had not heard of Alexievich until her Nobel Prize was announced. I quickly (and enthusiastically) read Voices of Chernobyl (enthusiasm tempered by anguish at the horrors experienced and conveyed through the words of the survivors she interviewed) and Zinky Boys (painfully "familiar" for one who had heard and read stories of returning American military men and women from Afghanistan). Alexievich has mastered what may not be an entirely "new" literary/historical genre (there are parallels in various approaches to oral history, including even Studs Terkel and others), but she has created a body of work that gives readers of the world deep insights into the lives, the suffering, and the courage of her people, as well as the gross cynicism and brutality of the rulers who have exploited the strength and patriotism of the people whom they betray. This more recent translation once again conveys the powerful personalities, the anguish, the triumph (if only of survival) of Russian women who served in various ways in Russia's wars and incursions. The experience of reading these accounts is always enlightening and fascinating and I now look forward to reading Secondhand Time. Alexievich offers insight and emotion and what feels like an independent and truthful portrayal of the groups and times of recent Russian history. I strongly recommend all of her books.

In all of its history only two people won the Nobel Prize for Literature for works of nonfiction. Winston Churchill was one of these; Svetlana Alexievich was the other. For those familiar with any of her other books no review is necessary. It was her first and it is magnificent.

For those who have never read any of her other books, I'll add a few words of encouragement. This author's books are unique in both style and purpose. First she decides on a subject matter. Here it is what the war was like for women who were soldiers in The USSR during WW II and soon after. Then she makes and records many hundreds of interviews with relevant subjects and weaves these interviews, or parts of them into chapters. Each interviewee is named, their rank and military specialty is given and then what each had to say is quoted. A quote may be as short as 35 words but some take up over five pages. Some are just interesting, others are heartbreaking and brought tears to my eyes. Military specialties oft the subjects include sniper, foot soldier, pilot, nurse, surgeon, scout, antiaircraft gunner, partisan or any of the other roles people play in war. As a whole her books are unique, VERY informative, and easy to read. About a million women fought in the Soviet army during World War II. They mastered all military specialties. Here are many of their stories. At times it is as if you are looking into their very souls

This book is highly recommended to all.

In the introduction the author says she wants to show war as it really is so she focuses on the horrible things these women saw and did. The first chapter was so gory I stopped reading and gave the book away.

Svetlana Alexievich was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize for literature. She writes in Russian. This is one of several books she has written in similar vein. It has been translated into English by renowned translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

The author inserts her own voice from time to time, but for the most part her book consists of extracts of letters from and interviews with women who took active combat or supporting roles in the Red Army during World War 2.

It would seem that most of the reminiscences were collected in the 1980s. Impossible as it would be to check the truth of all that Alexievich was told, it would be hard to doubt the authenticity of the great majority of individual contributions.

Most of the contributors were very young in the war years, typically 18 to early twenties, with some even younger and lying about their age to be accepted by the recruiting offices. Many had to be very persistent in their determination to join the Red Army, especially in front line operations.

Alexievich writes: ‘Women’s stories are different and about different things. “Women’s” war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. Its own words. There are no heroes and incredible feats, there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.’

More than a few of the women were involved in medical services, often accompanying the troops into battle so as to bandage the wounded on the spot, or recover them from the battlefield even whilst they were still under fire.

‘a wounded man called to me: “Bandage my leg!” His leg was torn off, hanging out of the trouser leg. I cut the trouser leg off: “Put my leg down! Put it beside me.” I did. If they’re conscious, they won’t give up their arm or leg. They take it along. And if they’re dying, they ask that it be buried with them.’

One woman describes moving forward into battle clinging to the outside of a tank. More than one makes mention of the epic 1943 tank battle at Kursk and of the horrific injuries suffered when a tank was hit and set on fire. One was at the battle for Stalingrad; a couple more were involved in relieving Leningrad during the 872 day blockade.

One was a tank driver. Others served as snipers, sappers, anti-aircraft gunners and pilots, and in many liaison and communication roles that took them close to the front line. There were cooks and laundresses too, even a hairdresser. A surprising number were given positions of command over men as well as women, which in some cases involved riding horses to get around.

Men’s haircuts were the norm, and men’s clothing and boots – often several sizes too big. Ladies’ underwear was in short supply; considerable ingenuity was used in making-up for the lack of it, often involving the traditional Russian soldier’s footcloth still in general use at that time.

The masculine appearance of the young women with their short hair and standard military uniforms may explain why suggestions of sexual relations or abuse are few and far between; or perhaps that is more a reflection of the reticence of that generation about such matters. The rape of German women in the last stages of the war – understood from other sources to have taken place on a horrific scale – is also mostly passed over, but does receive some acknowledgement, along with the vandalism and looting of German houses and dispatch back to the Soviet Union of items taken.

The neat white houses with tiled roofs and flower gardens seen in Germany contrasted strongly with the total destruction of villages in the Soviet Union. We are prepared for that to some extent before the troops arrive in Germany by descriptions of villages on the steppe almost totally obliterated, but for the odd Russian stove remaining where a cottage had been.

Towards the end of the book, the activities of the partisans in Belorussia are given good coverage – Alexievich is herself Belorussian.

And on returning home at war’s end:
‘There was no one I could tell that I had been wounded, that I had a concussion. Try telling it, and who will give you a job then, who will marry you? We were silent as fish. We never acknowledged to anyone that we had been at the front… It was later that they began to honor us, thirty years later … to invite us to meetings … But back then we hid, we didn’t even wear our medals. Men wore them, but not women. Men were victors, heroes, wooers, the war was theirs, but we were looked at with quite different eyes… they robbed us of the victory. They quietly exchanged it for ordinary women’s happiness… It was painful … Incomprehensible … Because at the front men treated us marvelously well, they always protected us. I’ve never encountered such an attitude toward women in peaceful life.’

Svetlana Alexievich is a best-selling author of four books, this is her fifth, and she was the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015. This alone should prompt people to read this book. But there is an even better one: the contents of the book. It causes readers to think about war and about women, both in war in in life generally. Her book is an oral history of women's experiences in World War II across Europe and Russia. Her writing skill is perfect. Her sentences flow, often like poetry.
The Bible speaks about women being present in war, and sets up rules for when they are captured, but these women were not warriors. In the fourth century BCE women fought in Greek armies of Athens and Sparta. Later they took part in the campaigns of Alexander the Great. During WW II, Russia lost so many men in battle that women were encouraged to join the army and fight like men. About a million women fought in the Soviet army. There were even women snipers who killed 75 Germans. But they were so traumatized, they found it hard to discuss their experiences after the war.
Many went to war when they were still quite young. These girls grew during the war. One reported in her oral history that returning home after the war, her mother measured her and saw she grew four inches.
“Women’s stories,” Alexievich writes, “are different and about different things. ‘Women’s’ war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. Its own words. There are no heroes and incredible feats, there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things. And it is not only they (people) who suffer, but the earth, the birds, the trees. All that lives on earth with us. They suffer without words, which is still more frightening.” She collected the stories of hundreds of women to discover what happens to humans during war, what did they see and understand, what did they think about life and death, how did their experience affect their soul.
Alexievich tells the tales of extraordinary storytellers. Although not writers or speakers, there “are pages in their lives that can rival the best pages of the classics.”
The women tell how they suffered. There was so much blood that more than one revealed “forty years have already gone by, but you won’t find anything red in my house. Ever since the war I’ve hated the color red!” Another told how after seeing so many dead bodies she could no longer eat meat.
The book is unforgettable.

There is not feminine about war. It brings out the worse and the best of people. Author Alexievich gathers unique war stories of Soviet woman who fought on the front line in all sorts of capacities during World War 2. One memory may only be a paragraph long while other several pages. Their experiences are not belittled or downplayed. The women reached into their memories to describe battlefield conditions, suffering, and death. Memories they were not either allowed to or encouraged not to speak of once the war ended. While this book will help end doubts on whether women can serve on the front lines of battle, it clearly shows that the ability to serve regardless of gender comes down to individual commitment.

I received this book through a Goodreads giveaway. Although encouraged, I was under no obligation to write a review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Alexievich can be very uneven, but I admired this book and read it right through. I've been a student of Russian culture and history for over 50 years and thought myself fairly well-informed, but this book covered new ground for me.

Most readers are more than vaguely aware that the eastern front was the apotheosis of barbaric destruction, but my blood ran to a lower degree of coldness when a number of these women related that their most horrifying memories of that conflict were overhearing the sounds made by men fighting hand to hand. We live in an age of mechanized warfare and it is very seldom we read accounts which could have been made by veterans of the wars of antiquity.

Soviet society brought humiliation of decent people to a level of demonic perfection that has seldom been exceeded, but when I read of so many of these fine women being disrespected as mere "comfort women" upon their return to civilian life, that was really too much.

(Let me first qualify that I didn't purchase this book but checked it out from my library.)

This is a great book and shares with us a most important piece of Russian/Soviet and world history. These accounts represent a lot of very brave women. My father was a U.S. Army officer through WWII--from the pre-war army formation through the surrender of the German troops in Italy on May 2, 1945. He impressed on me from an early age the great sacrifices of the Russian people in the war. Then, I began my own reading and study of WWII. After reading hundreds of books, and seeing that many documentary films, I'm forever impressed with the amount of death and destruction which ruled the world for at least six years (1939-45). 65,000,000 killed. And, there must have twice that many wounded. Hitler and the other Nazis wanted the Russian land and resources so much that he rained down Hell on them (Operation Barbarossa). People should watch the Russian film "Come and See"--the story of the Russian perimeter villages being savaged by the monstrous Einsatzgruppen, the most evil branch of the SS. To slightly paraphrase President Franklin Roosevelt, "The United States will be forever grateful to the people of the Soviet Union for what they're doing to stop this evil." (About 25,000,000 Russians were killed in WWII). They were taking the brunt of the Nazi war machine's powerful aggression. If they hadn't, that attack force would have been turned toward Britain and the United States.

I am one American who will be forever grateful to these women (and their other countrymen) who made immense sacrifices for the common good.

I just finished Svetlana Alexievich's The Unwomanly Art of War. It's the third book of hers I've read. As I was getting on the ferry for Juneau, a Marine veteran of Afghanistan saw the cover and was so excited recommending it. He had read it in one day; it took me a couple of weeks. I think a male Marine veteran recommending a book of oral history scribed by a woman about women serving on active duty and often at the front lines in the Soviet military WWII is worth a read. His recommendation says more than mine. Alexievich made me see that women can serve in the same capacity as men in the military--carry a rifle, shoot, care for fellow soldiers, be on the front lines. One of the things that the Marine said impressed him was the perspective of women in battle was different from that of men--the women noticed sights, smells, they did not need to block their senses to fight.

I believe here Nobel Prize was given for the content, not the actual writing. This book is a compilation of women's stories in the war. It is very empowering. Here history speaks for itself. Thanks to the writer for collecting these wonderful stories. I do not believe Alexievich is one of the greatest writers, I would not call this literature. However, she was able to record true account of the soviet women fight and heroism during WWII. This is a great book for young women all over the world to read... My heart goes to those young girls that were not scared to stand up to anyone and anything.

This book is supposed to unveil the hitherto hidden experiences of Soviet women who took part in the four years of fighting on the eastern front in World War Two, a conflict of quite staggering savagery and downright sadistic butchery. Quite quickly after starting though, you lose track of the feminine perspective as the former soldiers, nurses, partisans and other combatants recount incident after incident in the most brutally graphic manner. I don't think l have ever read anything quite so revolting about a war and these accounts reveals the women experienced pretty much every one of the atrocities the men did. It is hard to read more than one chapter at a time.There are moments of heartbreak and deep sadness but in large part, we learn about the horrors of war, and how dried blood on clothing cuts you open, and what it sounds like when soldiers are fighting hand to hand and breaking bones and smashing open skulls. The work does have its challenges, though. We hear from far too many women saying exactly the same thing, that no one took them seriously and they had to struggle to be allowed near the front, and that when they got there, the quartermasters had no clothes for them. A few accounts would have been instructive, not the dozens we see here. Alexievich starts each chapter with some philosophical musings about life and war and women and the nature of suffering and how she persuaded her interviewees to open up after decades of silence and what they ate during their conversations and the effect is boring, to be frank. Whether this method of writing deserves a Nobel Prize is I think up for serious debate. Read the book first and foremost to understand the misery of war.

In her "Secondhand Time" she took on sovki who adamantly adhered to the Soviet values cherishing their Soviet passports, and yet in this work, Svetlana asserts that there is something much more valuable than those Soviet passports: the reason? human beings are being guided by something stronger than history manufactured by the individual state. She writes about human beings, women in war and at war with the brutal states, the Soviets, Germany and whatever states on earth. Svetlana has turned the oral history into a new literary style.

Listening to the voices of women who had to fight for their country and at the same time preserve their feeling of being a woman was hard to take but gave a face to a horrible time in our past. Too bad we are doomed to repeat it

Her approach is to give a bit of space to each of the people who agreed to be interviewed. That left me wanting more. The women were very brave. but many of their favorite memories were of their moms and dads and families.

This book is a compilation of vignettes of Soviet women who fought in World War II. It's a rare glimpse at the hardships , pain, and deprivation the women faced. It is a great contribution to World War II and womens's history. Thanks to NetGalley for the copy.

This is a powerful narration of the second World War told by the Russian women who fought it. Alexievich describes the process of writing as one of building a temple out of the everyday matter of people’s lives. Even though the individual life is made up of meaningless details, the aggregate of individual lives tells an important story, whose details should not be lost.

A different kind of history. Very personal and very compelling. This is by no means an easy book to read, but it is fascinating to say the least. We who live in this place and at this time can't even imagine what the war was like for millions of people in Russia and eastern Europe. The war was horrible but the return home after the war was often a bad experience for the survivors (men and women).

Fascinating stories about women in the Soviet Army. A very different war history. I read it months ago and the stories of things like young girls fighting as sharpshooters has stuck with me. Recommended.

Translation surprises: How can angina (heart disease) be with fever? The translated text has at least two instances of angina reported in women's stories. Did the original text refer to strep throat [анги́на], which sounds like "angina" in Russian?

Such stories! Young girls, age 14 1/2 to 16, posing as older, accepted into service. They saw and did everything imaginable! Hardships X 10 and more. Then home, reviled by some as they served with all-male forces.

"The Unwomanly Face of War" is the literal translation of the Russian titles, "U vojny ne ženskoe lico," the first of the mosaic of Russian (and Belorussian) voices that won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature for Svetlana Alexievich (1948-). It was first published in 1985 at the height of perestroika in a printing of two million copies. The first American publication (there was a Russian publication in English in 1988) is based on a 2004 Russian text with some censored and self-censored bits incorporated into the text and a 30-page introduction that does nothing to answer my questions about the sampling of women and selection from what they said in interviews to include where.

The order of sections is not chronological, and I have no idea of what guided the ordering within sections—and the author clarifies that process not at all. Female veterans of the Great Patriotic War (WWII) referred her to comrades and referred comrades to her. Some were eager to talk about the already distant past (she began interviewing in 1978), while others were reluctant to reopen wounds by recalling what they did and how they lived at the front lines.

Though many of those quoted were nurses or doctors, there were also pilots, infantrywomen, and snipers. The snipers talk as precisely as they once shot, though eloquence is not a function of rank or domain.

Many spoke of wearing men’s clothing, including underwear, and boots that were too big for them (one woman with size-five feet had to slosh around in size-ten boots). Some mention stopping menstruation. Others had sexual liaisons with officers. As one medical assistant recalled that “there were only men around, so it’s better to live with one than to be afraid of all” and that “it was less frightening in battle than after battle.”

The women were not unaware that male soldiers were gang-raping civilians wherever the Red Army advanced. Some were aware that Stalin had purged many of the most capable military commanders during the reign of terror of the late-1930s and that the initial failures of the Red Army to stop the Nazis was directly related to policies of Josef Stalin, while others remember him as an inspirational figure. And some who adored him during the war were horrified by the postwar repression, particularly the suspicions (popular and official) about those who had left the Motherland, even to overrun Germany and other parts of what had been the enemy Third Reich.

Even knowing that her sample was not random, I’d like some summary statistics about “fraternization”, menstruation, and attitudes toward Stalin (ca. 1980, knowing that these might not be the same as in 1941, 1943, or 1948). My frustration with a lack of indications of statistical tendencies is one I have with oral history in general, not by any means only those of Svetlana Alexievich. She wrote: “I write not about war, but about human beings in war. I wrote not the history of a war, but the history of feelings. I am a historian of the soul. On the one hand I examine specific human beings, living in a specific time and taking part in specific events, and on the other hand I have to discern the eternally human in them.” I would suggest that there is immediate ground of generalizations about the ways in which women coped with their mass mobilization and functioning in the historically male endeavor of making war. Nonetheless, there are many amazing stories, many horrifying realities that these and other Soviet women survived and told Svetlana Alexievich about and that the highly regarded pair of translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volkhonsky rendered into English.