Women Writers Witnessing the Wars

The chapter analyzes literature on the First World War and the Russian Civil War written by women who took part in these conflicts. The tradition of the girl soldier as protagonist originates in the autobiography of Cavalry Maiden Nadezhda Durova and the novels of pre-revolutionary children&s;s writer Lidiia Charskaia. In her novel V okopakh ( In the Trenches , 1929), Tatiana Dubinskaia presents a heroine whose young age and childlike perception serve as the starting point for constructing a military identity that avoids associations with either masculinity or femininity. Liusia Argutinskaia, in her novel Ognennyi put’ ( The Fiery Path , 1932), creates the “female masculinity” of a woman soldier, the girlish femininity of a young girl soldier, and the expanded femininity of Red nurses. Gender exerted an omnipresent influence on the publication, reception, and later suppression of Sofia Fedorchenko&s;s Narod na voine ( People at War , 1917–1927), in which she constructs a peasant&s;s perspective on gender and its transformations during the revolutionary period. Women&s;s representations are also explored in Fedorchenko&s;s unpublished play “Ataman.” These writers addressed gender-related issues at war, including the unique experience of being a woman at the front, rape by soldiers, and the harsh reception women received upon returning home.