Yashka My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile

By Maria Botchkareva, Isaac Levine (editor),

Book cover of Yashka My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile

Book description

This book tells the extraordinary story of Maria Botchkareva “Yashka”, a peasant girl grown up in Siberia, who at the outbreak of First World War asked and obtained to enlist in the Russian army: not to be one of the many Red Cross nurses, but to be a soldier and…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Yashka My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov

Author

We knew that Russia mobilized more female volunteers in World War I than any other country. But we are so grateful that Maria Bochkareva, a semi-literate peasant and the founder of the first Russian female death battalion, took the time to share her story with a reporter. It sheds dazzling light on soldiers’ experiences on the Eastern Front. We had often marveled at this untrained woman’s success as a combatant and a commander.

The book’s first chapters show that she learned grit and toughness from living with an abusive husband, resisting the sexual advances of a Siberian governor, and standing…

From Jonathan's list on how the Russian Revolution changed our world.