From childhood, from school, with the help of television, books, for many years we have been instilled in the image of a strong woman who is in no way inferior to a man, who, as they say, into a burning hut and further in the text. This propaganda also affected the female image in the war. This topic is rather slippery, so I would like to immediately note one fact - no one wants to belittle the role of our women during the Great Patriotic War, no doubt they were assistants and a strong rear for our soldiers. Someone bandaged wounded soldiers, someone organized communications between the units, someone helped in the rear at the plant or grow crops - each contributed to the overall victory over the enemy. However, along with this, already in the post-war years, there was an unhealthy tendency to ascribe to the female half of the feats that they had never performed and, let's be honest, were not able to perform,if you look closely. These processes especially intensified after the death of I. V. Stalin in 1953, who at the time of his activity held back the development of matriarchal tendencies in our country. The prohibition of abortion, the introduction of separate education for boys and girls - all these were Stalin's initiatives, which were successfully curtailed after his death. At the same time, the Secretary General did not particularly indulge in the propaganda of female excessive (here it is worth emphasizing twice) heroism during the war years. I gave my due, but no more. Everything changed from the 60s onwards. The seeds of matriarchy began to be laid, and to be exalted, attributed to non-existent feats of women. The propaganda of material values instead of spiritual ones began. Suddenly, allegedly forgotten facts about unique cases of heroism during the Second World War began to appear everywhere, and, often,the facts were literally sucked from the thumb.
Let's try to consider an example of such imposition of false facts using one example. It will be about the hero of the Soviet Union Tsukanova Maria Nikitichna, in this case it is worth mentioning right away that the hero's star was given for a reason, but this is not the question.
Search the Internet, for fun, for facts about her feat. In order not to bother anyone with searches, we will open one of the articles on our website.
We read: “In the essay“Maria Tsukanova”of the book“Heroines of the War: Essays on Women - Heroes of the Soviet Union”it is said that in August 1945, when the Korean port of Seisin was liberated, the brave corporal-medical instructor evacuated over 50 soldiers and commanders of the Red Army from the battlefield. At the same time, the girl was wounded in the shoulder, but Tsukanova remained in the positions of her company. She, along with other soldiers of her unit, covered the retreat of the main forces, hitting the advancing enemy with automatic fire and at the same time bandaging wounded comrades. The girl was wounded again, she lost consciousness.
Details of the feat of Maria Tsukanova are little known. But, according to the surviving information, she, defending the hill occupied by the marines, laid down with automatic fire up to 90 attacking Japanese. When the enemy took the height, the wounded Tsukanova was brutally tortured. After the Soviet marines recaptured the hill, they found the mutilated corpse of 20-year-old Maria there."
Tell me, dear men, does nothing personally make you think about this description? Let's be clear: getting wounded and then killing up to 90 Japanese with machine gun fire is not even a Hollywood script, but rather an Indian film famous for such a "cranberry". A lot of questions arise: did the Japanese go to slaughter like a herd, without resisting? Was Tsukanova's ammunition infinite (since hitting 90 people with several even fully charged magazines is unrealistic in principle)? And so on and so forth.
Promotional video:
Fortunately, there are now excellent Department of Defense reference bases with declassified war documents. We open one of them and find Tsukanova Maria Nikitichna
We open the section “Feat” and in the original of 1945 we read the following: “She provided medical assistance to many soldiers, she carried many wounded soldiers and officers from the battlefield, thereby saving their lives. Wounded in the leg (!!!!), she did not leave the soldiers and, overcoming the pain, she provided them with all possible help. having lost a lot of blood, comrade. Tsukanova lost consciousness and, as a result, fell into the hands of brutal Japanese invaders. The Japanese, mocking her, tried to find out from her the presence of our forces, but Tsukanova did not answer them. The Japanese bandits decided to force her to speak and gouged out her eyes, but without getting any information from her, they brutally cut her body with knives."
A huge difference isn't it? Here we see a really heroic feat worthy of a star of a hero of a simple Russian girl, who until the last helped the soldiers and did not lose her fortitude even in captivity under terrible torture. Why and for what purpose it was required in the future to envelop her biography in fantastic details, the story is silent, draw a conclusion yourself.
In conclusion, I would like to say that such a practice, alas, has been used more and more often since the time of the Khrushchev thaw. The woman began to be proclaimed almost the center of the universe, not the man's assistant, but his complete replacement in any business: at a factory, in the army, in science, etc. What all this has led to in the end to explain, we think it makes no sense, all of you live and see the fruits of this in full.
Author: Maxim Zverev