The Unwomanly Face of War

If you didn’t know that between 800,000 and a million Soviet women fought in combat during World War II, this book will blow your mind.

Even for those aware of the history of Soviet female combatants – Soviet women fought in every imaginable military role, from fighter pilots to snipers to tank units – Alexievich’s astonishing oral history brings their stories to life. It’s especially profound to hear from the women themselves because after the war was over, women were told to never speak of their military service and got very little recognition for it.

By the time Alexievich recorded… show more.

Many Americans know relatively little about the war on the Eastern Front and the wartime experience of the Soviet Union. The oral histories presented in this extraordinary book come as a revelation, shedding important new light on the role of women—soldiers, doctors, nurses, pilots, partisans, and others—to the Soviet war effort. Alexievich masterfully weaves these stories together. The reader walks away with a fresh appreciation of the Soviet contribution to the victory, the extent of Soviet suffering under the Nazi occupation, the critical role of women in the war, and the ways that we remember (or choose to forget) the… show more.

Svetlana Alexievich is the doyenne of oral historians. The Unwomanly Face of War, her first book, is composed from years of interviews with dozens of Soviet women, a million of whom had joined the Red Army. The patriotic fervour at war’s outbreak, the filth, and degradation of its reality, the awful disappointments of its aftermath, as experienced by women, makes for unique and harrowing reading.