The big silence
Women in the war
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
They came, saw, and conquered – and were forgotten. Some 800,000 women saw active service on the Soviet side. They were either conscripted or joined up as volunteers in an army that was unprepared for women. They fought on equal terms with the men, which contradicted the later myth of the wife waiting at home. They also remembered things that did not fit in with the official account of the history of the war, and so became a disruptive factor in official memories.
(Osteuropa 4-6/2005, pp. 186–196)