How did Soviet women fight in Afghanistan? Irrecoverable losses of the Soviet Union in the Afghan war Women sent by military enlistment offices in Afghanistan

The Fortitude of a Woman In the Gestapo dungeon, Ilsa behaved courageously. She did not betray a single member of her group, although she was beaten daily until she lost consciousness. Then they poured water over them, brought them to their senses and began to beat again.

Chapter Eight. Black belt in karate for a woman in white

Chapter 7. Women in ISIS Myrna Nabhan, Le Huffington Post, France After the Arab Spring, the plight of women in Syria has escalated catastrophically. Today, about a quarter of refugee families are headed by a woman, and human rights organizations are beating

This year, our country celebrated the 25th anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. And in 2015, the "forgotten regiment", which was formed from women who fought there, will celebrate 20 years. They now prefer not to even mention them.

Alfia

A "limited contingent of Soviet troops" crossed the Amu Darya in December 1979. In our country, the war on foreign territory was called "helping the brotherly people of Afghanistan" and "fulfilling an international duty." The Soviet newspapers did not say anything about the killed and wounded, or about life in tents under the scorching sun during the day and in the bitter cold at night. Therefore, Alfiya Kagarmanova agreed to work in Afghanistan without hesitation.

Her military destiny began in Leningrad with a romantic story. Alya met the German Wolfgang almost by accident, but the friendly correspondence of young people eventually made both of them want to meet. And the girl asked to work in a group of Soviet troops in Germany, and when she was offered to go to Afghanistan instead, she also did not refuse. First, she was a member of the Komsomol. And secondly, she simply did not know what awaited her.

So Alya became one of the first Soviet women who ended up in Afghanistan. In Leningrad, she studied at the Faculty of Journalism, so here she took up her usual business - she wrote and edited materials for a local military newspaper. And at the same time she participated in amateur performances. The military vocal and instrumental ensemble, in the first composition of which Alfia sang, later became the famous "Cascade". And as part of a military propaganda brigade, she traveled to villages and told the women of Afghanistan about how they lived in the Soviet country. The military took girls with them because of the local custom, which prohibits men from entering the female half. This, by the way, was often used by spooks.

Talking about what she saw with her own eyes, Alya looks up and a little to the side so that tears do not shed.

When I arrived in 1981, everything was still just beginning. And they lived in tents, and the hospitals were in tents, she says. - The mortality rate was terrible, because no one knew how to work in the field. The sister's bandages were washed, as in the Great Patriotic War, there was not enough suture materials - they took parachute lines, took them apart and sewed. There was a shortage of medicines, and everyone got sick with infectious diseases - dysentery and hepatitis mowed down ours along with the dushmans.

Alya herself was in the hospital tent for two months. Formally, they were forbidden to eat and drink from the locals, but in the East such a refusal is a great insult. And the treats had to be taken, although the houses were in terrible unsanitary conditions. She says she survived because the name Alfiya translated from Arabic means "living for a thousand years." And also thanks to the head physician of the Bagram hospital - he did not let me go to Tashkent. There, tents for infectious patients were set up right on the streets, and not everyone had time to wait for medical assistance.

Only when the death rate reached a nightmarish level did a special commission arrive, and after a check, doctors, medicines and donated blood went to Afghanistan, ”says Alfiya. - If this were all at the beginning of the war, how many lives could have been saved ...

Employees and military personnel

Warriors-internationalists and families scorched by Afgan - widows and mothers who have lost their sons, were entitled to significant benefits, including housing and garden plots out of turn, discounts on utility bills and travel to public transport... However, numerous changes in legislation have left without attention women who have walked this path side by side with Afghan men.

Article 3. Federal law"On Veterans", adopted in 1995, directly refers to the veterans of hostilities all who were sent "to work in Afghanistan in the period from December 1979 to December 1989 and worked the deadline set for the direction or were seconded ahead of schedule for valid reasons." However, when distributing benefits, this category has the right only to preferential provision of vouchers to sanatorium-resort organizations, an advantage when admitting to horticultural, vegetable gardening and dacha non-profit associations of citizens, as well as the right to use annual leave at a convenient time for them. And one more priority when installing an apartment telephone. In modern times, it is not so much ridiculous as humiliating.

Legislative changes ignored women who walked their way side by side with Afghan warriors

Both Alya and other women could get to Afghanistan only through the Ministry of Defense. In her work book there is a record that she was hired as a typist in a military unit. The archival certificate issued by the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense says that there is an order from the commander of the military unit field mail 51854 N 75, according to which "to consider as arrivals: 08.21.1981 an employee of the Soviet Army Kagarmanova AM to enroll in the lists of the personnel of the unit, for all types of allowance." The same certificate says that this military unit took part in hostilities for all ten years.

But telephone operators, typists, cooks, waitresses, accountants and nurses who worked in military units are not considered military personnel by law. They were just employees and are now deprived of real benefits. They were not even counted in the work experience "a year and a half," as it was in the days of the USSR.

The most offensive for the nurses, - says Alya, - they saw blood and death most of all. There was not enough donor blood - they donated it in liters, they fell - but donated it. Isn't that a feat? The guys did not go to combat operations every day, but for two years they closed their eyes to the last call "Mom!" told their peers: "I'm here, son ..."

Inequality sign

The humiliating differentiation applies only to the "Afghan women". For example, among the participants in the Great Patriotic War, the same law includes civilians who held regular positions in military units, headquarters and institutions that were part of the active army. When this material was being prepared, in order to justify such a different approach, I was repeatedly told that women went to Afghanistan voluntarily. But was it any different in 1941?

I graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Culture and was liable for military service as a civil defense nurse, says Vera Kuchina. - Once in winter at four o'clock in the morning I was summoned to the military registration and enlistment office and told that I had to go to Afghanistan. We were not forced, but persistently asked. They were assured that it would be absolutely safe there, and they were given ten minutes to "consult with my mother."

Now people like Vera and Alfia are denied even the issuance of veteran certificates. Military enlistment offices routinely refer to the fact that women were not military personnel and did not take part in military operations.

We were all there in a combat position. Everyone who was in Afghanistan is considered to be fighters of the 40th Army, ”Petr Zubarev, professor of the Department of General Surgery of the Military Medical Academy, is outraged; in 1980-1982, he was an army surgeon at a Kabul hospital. - And those who refuse to receive a certificate should be punished - they have no right. All participants in those events must have an ID of a soldier-internationalist.

Probably, it would still be wrong to equate military officers and saleswomen, telephone operators, cooks. But it is also wrong to completely hush up the facts about how yesterday's schoolgirls were blown up by mines or took machine guns from the hands of killed soldiers who were supposed to guard them. Against this background, the answer from the Veterans Affairs Committee looks all the more humiliating. The State Duma RF, which actually says: "There is no money for you."

“Based on the fact that these citizens did not have the status of military personnel, unfortunately, there are no legal grounds for amending paragraph 1 of Article 16 of the Federal Law“ On Veterans ”,” says the answer of the first deputy chairman of the committee Franz Klintsevich. We do not hide the fact that bills requiring additional financial costs from the federal budget, as a rule, are not supported by federal executive authorities and, as a result, do not find their legal permission. "

From the editorial board

Please consider this article as an official appeal to the legislature with a request to pay attention to the situation of civilians sent to work in Afghanistan and to take measures to restore social justice.

Direct speech

Sergei Andenko, Vice-Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg (more than two years involved in the rescue of the wounded in Afghanistan):

The question is extremely difficult. Of course, comparing the guys who went into battle in the mountains and the civilians who worked in the hospital is not entirely correct. The principle of justice is violated. But, for example, presenting the highest government military awards to athletes is also wrong. A pilot or an infantryman was ready to die and accomplished a feat, while a skier or skater trained hard and achieved results. Yes, for such achievements it is necessary to encourage, but it should be a separate award for the highest achievements in sports, and not the title "Hero of Russia". Likewise, in the case of the Afghan war: social support measures need to be established for everyone, but they still need to be different. Differentiation is warranted, although not to the same extent as it is now.

The participation of Soviet women in the Afghan conflict was not particularly publicized. On numerous stelae and obelisks in memory of that war, stern male faces are depicted.

Nowadays, a civilian nurse who had been ill with typhoid fever near Kabul, or a saleswoman in a military service, wounded by a stray shrapnel on the way to the combat unit, are deprived of additional benefits. Officers and private men have privileges, even if they were in charge of a warehouse or repairing cars. However, there were women in Afghanistan. They did their job regularly, endured the hardships and dangers of life in the war, and, of course, died.

How women ended up in Afghanistan

Women soldiers were sent to Afghanistan by order of the command. In the early 1980s, up to 1.5% of women in uniform were in the Soviet army. If a woman possessed the necessary skills, she could be sent to a hot spot, often regardless of her desire: "The Motherland said - it is necessary, the Komsomol answered - yes!"

Nurse Tatyana Evpatova recalls: in the early 1980s it was very difficult to get abroad. One of the ways is to register through a military registration and enlistment office for service in the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary, the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Mongolia, Poland. Tatiana dreamed of seeing Germany and submitted the necessary documents in 1980. After 2.5 years, she was invited to the military registration and enlistment office and offered to go to Afghanistan.

Tatiana was forced to agree, and she was sent to Fayzabad as an operating room and a dressing nurse. Returning to the Union, Evpatova gave up medicine forever and became a philologist.

Ministry of Internal Affairs officers could also get into Afghanistan - among them there were also a small amount of women. In addition, the Ministry of Defense recruited civilian employees of the Soviet Army to serve in a limited contingent. Civilians, including women, signed contracts and flew to Kabul and from there to duty stations around the country.

What was assigned to women in hot spots

Female military personnel were sent to Afghanistan as translators, cipher officers, signalmen, archivists, and employees of the logistics bases in Kabul and Puli-Khumri. Many women worked as paramedics, nurses and doctors in front-line medical units and hospitals.

Civil servants received positions in military organizations, regimental libraries, laundries, worked as cooks, waitresses in canteens. In Jalalabad, the commander of the 66th separate motorized rifle brigade managed to find a secretary-typist, who was also a hairdresser for the unit's soldiers. There were also civilian women among the paramedics and nurses.

Under what conditions did the weaker sex serve? The war does not distinguish between age, profession and gender - a cook, a salesman, a nurse, in the same way, came under fire, exploded on mines, burned in wrecked planes. In everyday life, I had to cope with the numerous difficulties of a nomadic, uncomfortable life: a toilet booth, a shower from an iron barrel with water in a tarpaulin-covered fence.

“Living rooms, operating rooms, outpatient clinics and hospitals were housed in canvas tents. At night, fat rats ran between the outer and lower layers of the tents. Some fell through the shabby fabric and fell down. We had to invent gauze curtains so that these creatures did not fall on the naked body, - recalls the nurse Tatyana Evpatova. - In the summer, even at night it was above plus 40 degrees - we covered ourselves with wet sheets. Already in October, frosts hit - they had to sleep in pea jackets. Dresses from the heat and sweat turned into rags - having got chintz from the military store, we sewed unpretentious overalls. "

Special assignments are a delicate matter

Some women coped with tasks of unthinkable difficulty, where experienced men gave up. A Tajik woman Mavlyuda Tursunova at the age of 24 arrived in the west of Afghanistan (her division was stationed in Herat and Shindand). She served in the 7th Directorate of the Main Political Directorate of the SA and the Navy, which was engaged in special propaganda.

Mavliuda spoke excellent native language, and more Tajiks lived in Afghanistan than in the USSR. Komsomol member Tursunova knew many Islamic prayers by heart. Not long before she was sent to the war, she buried her father and for a whole year listened to the memorial prayers read by the mullah every week. Her memory did not disappoint.

The instructor of the political department, Tursunova, was given the task of convincing women and children that the shuravi are their friends. A fragile girl boldly walked around the villages, she was allowed into the houses of the female half. One of the Afghans agreed to confirm that he knew her as a small child, and then her parents took her to Kabul. To direct questions, Tursunova confidently called herself an Afghan.

The plane in which Tursunova flew from Kabul was shot down on takeoff, but the pilot managed to land in a minefield. Miraculously, everyone survived, but already in the Union Mavlyuda was paralyzed - she caught up with a shell shock. Fortunately, the doctors managed to get her back on her feet. Tursunova was awarded the Order of Honor, Afghan medals "10 years of the Saur revolution" and "From the grateful Afghan people", the medal "For Courage".

How many were there

To this day, there is no accurate official statistics on the number of civilian and military women who participated in the Afghan war. There is information about 20-21 thousand people. 1,350 women who served in Afghanistan were awarded orders and medals of the USSR.

The information collected by enthusiasts confirms the deaths in Afghanistan from 54 to 60 women. Among them are four warrant officers and 48 civilian employees. Some were blown up by mines, came under fire, others died from illness or accidents. Alla Smolina spent three years in Afghanistan, served as the head of the office in the military prosecutor's office of the Jalalabad garrison. For many years she has meticulously collected and published information about the heroines forgotten by their homeland - saleswomen, nurses, cooks, waitresses.

Typist Valentina Lakhteeva from Vitebsk voluntarily went to Afghanistan in February 1985. A month and a half later, she died near Puli-Khumri during shelling of a military unit. Paramedic Galina Shakleina from the Kirov region served for a year in a military hospital in North Kunduz and died of blood poisoning. Nurse Tatyana Kuzmina from Chita served for a year and a half in the Jalalabad medical center. She drowned in a mountain river while rescuing an Afghan child. Not awarded.

Didn't make it to the wedding

Heart and feelings cannot be turned off even in war. Unmarried girls or single mothers often met their love in Afghanistan. Many couples did not want to wait to return to the Union to get married. The canteen waitress for the flight crew, Natalya Glushak, and the communications company officer, Yuri Tsurka, decided to register the marriage at the Soviet consulate in Kabul and left Jalalabad with a convoy of armored personnel carriers.

Soon after leaving the checkpoint of the unit, the convoy ran into an ambush by the Mujahideen and came under heavy fire. The lovers died on the spot - in vain they waited until late at the consulate for the couple to register their marriage.

But not all girls died at the hands of the enemy. A former Afghan warrior recalls: “Natasha, a military service officer in Kunduz, was shot by her boyfriend, the head of the Special Department from Hairaton. He himself shot himself half an hour later. He was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner, and an order was read about her in front of the unit, calling him a “dangerous speculator-currency dealer”.

The participation of Soviet women in the Afghan conflict was not particularly publicized. On numerous stelae and obelisks in memory of that war, stern male faces are depicted.

Nowadays, a civilian nurse who had been ill with typhoid fever near Kabul, or a saleswoman in a military service, wounded by a stray shrapnel on the way to the combat unit, are deprived of additional benefits. Officers and private men have privileges, even if they were in charge of a warehouse or repairing cars. However, there were women in Afghanistan. They did their job regularly, endured the hardships and dangers of life in the war, and, of course, died.

How women ended up in Afghanistan

Women soldiers were sent to Afghanistan by order of the command. In the early 1980s, up to 1.5% of women in uniform were in the Soviet army. If a woman possessed the necessary skills, she could be sent to a hot spot, often regardless of her desire: "The Motherland said - it is necessary, the Komsomol answered - yes!"

Nurse Tatyana Evpatova recalls: in the early 1980s it was very difficult to get abroad. One of the ways is to register through a military registration and enlistment office for service in the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary, the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Mongolia, Poland. Tatiana dreamed of seeing Germany and submitted the necessary documents in 1980. After 2.5 years, she was invited to the military registration and enlistment office and offered to go to Afghanistan.

Tatiana was forced to agree, and she was sent to Fayzabad as an operating room and a dressing nurse. Returning to the Union, Evpatova gave up medicine forever and became a philologist.

Ministry of Internal Affairs officers could also get to Afghanistan - there were also a small number of women among them. In addition, the Ministry of Defense recruited civilian employees of the Soviet Army to serve in a limited contingent. Civilians, including women, signed contracts and flew to Kabul and from there to duty stations around the country.

What was assigned to women in hot spots

Female military personnel were sent to Afghanistan as translators, cipher officers, signalmen, archivists, and employees of the logistics bases in Kabul and Puli-Khumri. Many women worked as paramedics, nurses and doctors in front-line medical units and hospitals.

Civil servants received positions in military organizations, regimental libraries, laundries, worked as cooks, waitresses in canteens. In Jalalabad, the commander of the 66th separate motorized rifle brigade managed to find a secretary-typist, who was also a hairdresser for the unit's soldiers. There were also civilian women among the paramedics and nurses.

In what conditions did the weaker sex serve?

The war makes no distinction by age, profession or sex - a cook, a salesman, a nurse, in the same way, came under fire, exploded on mines, burned in wrecked planes. In everyday life, I had to cope with the numerous difficulties of a nomadic, uncomfortable life: a toilet booth, a shower from an iron barrel with water in a tarpaulin-covered fence.

“Living rooms, operating rooms, outpatient clinics and hospitals were housed in canvas tents. At night, fat rats ran between the outer and lower layers of the tents. Some fell through the shabby fabric and fell down. We had to invent gauze curtains so that these creatures did not fall on the naked body, - recalls the nurse Tatyana Evpatova. - In the summer, even at night it was above plus 40 degrees - we covered ourselves with wet sheets. Already in October, frosts hit - they had to sleep in pea jackets. Dresses from the heat and sweat turned into rags - having got chintz from the military store, we sewed unpretentious overalls. "

Special assignments are a delicate matter

Some women coped with tasks of unthinkable difficulty, where experienced men gave up. A Tajik woman Mavlyuda Tursunova at the age of 24 arrived in the west of Afghanistan (her division was stationed in Herat and Shindand). She served in the 7th Directorate of the Main Political Directorate of the SA and the Navy, which was engaged in special propaganda.

Mavlyuda spoke her native language perfectly, and more Tajiks lived in Afghanistan than in the USSR. Komsomol member Tursunova knew many Islamic prayers by heart. Not long before she was sent to the war, she buried her father and for a whole year listened to the memorial prayers read by the mullah every week. Her memory did not disappoint.

The instructor of the political department, Tursunova, was given the task of convincing women and children that the shuravi are their friends. A fragile girl boldly walked around the villages, she was allowed into the houses of the female half. One of the Afghans agreed to confirm that he knew her as a small child, and then her parents took her to Kabul. To direct questions, Tursunova confidently called herself an Afghan.

The plane in which Tursunova flew from Kabul was shot down on takeoff, but the pilot managed to land in a minefield. Miraculously, everyone survived, but already in the Union Mavlyuda was paralyzed - she caught up with a shell shock. Fortunately, the doctors managed to get her back on her feet. Tursunova was awarded the Order of Honor, Afghan medals "10 years of the Saur revolution" and "From the grateful Afghan people", the medal "For Courage".

How many were there

To this day, there is no accurate official statistics on the number of civilian and military women who participated in the Afghan war. There is information about 20-21 thousand people. 1,350 women who served in Afghanistan were awarded orders and medals of the USSR.

The information collected by enthusiasts confirms the deaths in Afghanistan from 54 to 60 women. Among them are four warrant officers and 48 civilian employees. Some were blown up by mines, came under fire, others died from illness or accidents. Alla Smolina spent three years in Afghanistan, served as the head of the office in the military prosecutor's office of the Jalalabad garrison. For many years she has meticulously collected and published information about the heroines forgotten by their homeland - saleswomen, nurses, cooks, waitresses.

Typist Valentina Lakhteeva from Vitebsk voluntarily went to Afghanistan in February 1985. A month and a half later, she died near Puli-Khumri during shelling of a military unit. Paramedic Galina Shakleina from the Kirov region served for a year in a military hospital in North Kunduz and died of blood poisoning. Nurse Tatyana Kuzmina from Chita served for a year and a half in the Jalalabad medical center. She drowned in a mountain river while rescuing an Afghan child. Not awarded.

Didn't make it to the wedding

Heart and feelings cannot be turned off even in war. Unmarried girls or single mothers often met their love in Afghanistan. Many couples did not want to wait to return to the Union to get married. The canteen waitress for the flight crew, Natalya Glushak, and the communications company officer, Yuri Tsurka, decided to register the marriage at the Soviet consulate in Kabul and left Jalalabad with a convoy of armored personnel carriers.

Soon after leaving the checkpoint of the unit, the convoy ran into an ambush by the Mujahideen and came under heavy fire. The lovers died on the spot - in vain they waited until late at the consulate for the couple to register their marriage.

But not all girls died at the hands of the enemy. A former Afghan warrior recalls: “Natasha, a military service officer in Kunduz, was shot by her boyfriend, the head of the Special Department from Hairaton. He himself shot himself half an hour later. He was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner, and an order was read about her in front of the unit, calling him "a dangerous speculator-currency dealer."

On the same topic:

What did Soviet women do on Afghan war How Soviet women fought in Afghanistan