Bhuvasorakul, Jessica Leigh. “Unit Cohesion among the Three Soviet Women’s Air Regiments during World War II.” Master’s thesis, Florida State University, 2004. Florida State University Libraries: Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations of the Graduate School, 2004.
Brontman, Lazar, and Lev Borisovich Khvat. The Heroic Flight of the Rodina. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1938.
Campbell, D’Ann. “Women in Combat: The World War II Experience in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union.” Journal of Military History 57:2 (April 1993): 301–23.
Chaika, N. “Night Bomber” (in Russian as “Na nochnom bombardirovshchike”). In Heroines: Essays on Women Heroes of the Soviet Union (in Russian as Geroini: ocherki o zhenshchinakh———Geroiakh Sovetskogo Soiuza). 2 Vols. Edited by L. F. Toropov. Moscow: Politizdat, 1969.
Cottam, Kazimiera Janina. “Lidya (Lily) Vladimirovna Litvyak (b. 1921),” Red Army Online, 2006. www.redarmyonline.org/FI_Article_by_KJ_Cottam.html.
———. “Marina Mikhailovna Raskova.” In Vol. 3 of World War II: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection. Edited by Spencer C. Tucker, 1389–90. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2016.
———. “Soviet Women in Combat in World War II: The Ground/Air Defense Forces.” In Women in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, edited by Tova Yedlin, 115–27. New York: Praeger, 1980.
———. “Soviet Women Soldiers in World War II: Three Biographical Sketches.” Minerva 18:3–4 (December 31, 2000): 16–36.
———. Women in War and Resistance: Selected Biographies of Soviet Women Soldiers. Nepean, ON, Canada: New Military Publishing, 1998.
Dowswell, Paul. Usborne True Stories: The Second World War. Illustrated by Jeremy Gower and Kuo Kang Chen. London: Usborne Publishing, 2007.
Erickson, John. “Soviet Women at War.” In World War 2 and the Soviet People: Selected Papers from the Fourth World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies, Harrogate, 1990. Edited by John Garrard and Carol Garrard, 50–76. London: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
Flerovsky, Alexei. “Women Flyers of Fighter Planes.” Soviet Life, May 1975, 28.
“Galina Gavrilovna Korchuganova.” Biography in Women in Aviation International. www.wai.org/pioneers/2006/galina-gavrilovna-korchuganova.
Garber, Megan. “Night Witches: The Female Fighter Pilots of World War II.” Atlantic, July 15, 2013. www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/night-witches-the-female-fighter-pilots-of-world-war-ii/277779.
Gibson, Karen Bush. Women Aviators: 26 Stories of Pioneer Flights, Daring Missions, and Record-Setting Journeys. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2013.
Glancey, Jonathan. “The Very Few.” Guardian, December 15, 2001. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2001/dec/15/weekend.jonathanglancey.
Guardian. “The White Rose of Stalingrad,” Notes and Queries. www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-18520,00.html.
Harris, Adrienne. “The Myth of the Woman Warrior and World War II in Soviet Culture.” PhD thesis, University of Kansas, 2008. KU ScholarWorks. https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/4136/umi-ku-2564_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
———. “Yulia Drunina: The ‘Blond-Braided Soldier’ On the Poetic Front.” Slavic and East European Journal 54:4 (Winter 2010): 643–65.
Krylova, Anna. Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
———. “Stalinist Identity from the Viewpoint of Gender: Rearing a Generation of Professionally Violent Women-Fighters in 1930s Stalinist Russia.” Gender & History 16:3 (November 2004): 626–53.
Lambert, Bruce. “Valentina S. Grizodubova, 83, A Pioneer Aviator for the Soviets.” Obituary in New York Times, May 1, 1993. www.nytimes.com/1993/05/01/obituaries/valentina-s-grizodubova-83-a-pioneer-aviator-for-the-soviets.html.
Lilya Litvyak website, maintained by Reina Pennington. www.lilylitviak.org.
Markova, Galina Ivanovna. Take-Off: The Story of the Hero of the Soviet Union, M. M. Raskova (in Russian as Vzlet: O Geroe Sovetskogo Soyuza M. M. Raskovoi). Moscow: Politizdat, 1986. https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=http://militera.lib.ru/bio/markova_gi/index.html&prev=searcha.
Markwick, Roger. “Irina Rakobolskaya.” Obituary in Guardian, October 16, 2016. www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/16/irina-rakobolskaya-obituary.
——— and Euridice Charon Cardona. Soviet Women on the Front Line in the Second World War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Meos., E. “Russian Women Fighter Pilots.” Flight International, December 27, 1962, 1019–20.
Merry, Lois K. Women Military Pilots of World War II: A History with Biographies of American, British, Russian and German Aviators. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.
Milanetti, Gian Piero. Soviet Airwomen of the Great Patriotic War: A Pictorial History. Rome: Istituto Bibliografico Napoleone, 2013.
Myers, Beth Ann. “Soviet and American Airwomen during World War II: A Comparison of Their Formation, Treatment and Dismissal.” Master’s thesis, Defense Technical Information Center, 2003. www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a416572.pdf.
Myles, Bruce. Night Witches: The Untold Story of Soviet Women in Combat. Chicago, IL: Academy Chicago, 1990.
Pennington, Reina. “‘Do Not Speak of the Services You Rendered’: Women Veterans of Aviation in the Soviet Union.” In A Soldier and a Woman: Sexual Integration in the Military, edited by Gerard de Groot and Corinna Peniston-Bird, 153–71. Harlow, UK: Longman, 2000.
———. Wings, Women & War: Soviet Airwomen in World War II Combat. Foreword by John Erickson. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001.
———, editor. Amazons to Fighter Pilots: A Biographical Dictionary of Military Women, Vol. 1, A–Q. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003.
———. Amazons to Fighter Pilots: A Biographical Dictionary of Military Women, Vol. 2, R–Z. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003.
Reynolds, Quentin. “Three Russian Women.” In The Curtain Rises, 119–32. New York: Random House, 1944.
Sakaida, Henry. Heroines of the Soviet Union 1941–45. Oxford: Osprey, 2003.
Sandbrook, Dominic. “Cockpit Heroines: The Female Soviet Fighter Pilots Were the First Women Ever Thrown into the Front-Line Battle.” Sunday Times (of London), April 12, 2015. www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cockpit-heroines-26vfg6vcmv9.
Strebe, Amy Goodpaster. Flying for Her Country: The American and Soviet Women Military Pilots of World War II. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2009.
———. “Marina Raskova & the Soviet Women Aviators of World War II.” Russian Life 46:1 (January–February 2003): 42–47.
Vinogradova, Lyuba. Defending the Motherland: The Soviet Women Who Fought Hitler’s Aces. Translated from the Russian by Arch Tait. London: MacLehose Press, Quercus, 2015.
White, Christine A. Introduction to A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II, by Anna Noggle, 3–14. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. First published in 1994.
OTHER SOURCES ON AIRWOMEN
Babichev, Sergei. “A Woman’s Affair (Russian Pilot Svetlana Protasova).” Russian Life 40:3 (March 1997): 9–12.
BBC News, Europe. “The Ballerina Who Takes to the Skies.” August 30, 2017. www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-41091263/the-ballerina-who-takes-to-the-skies.
———. “Russia to Train Female Fighter Pilots.” August 13, 2017. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-40917550.
Brock, Elizabeth, editor. “Moscow Russia–Aviatrisa 2004 Newsletter.” Woman Pilot, November 27, 2016. www.womanpilot.com/?p=423.
Carsenat, Elian, and Elena Rossini. “Airline Pilots.” GenderGapGrader.com, 2014. www.gendergapgrader.com/studies/airline-pilots.
Curtis, Lettice. The Forgotten Pilots: A Story of the Air Transport Auxiliary 1939–45. Olney, UK: Nelson and Saunders, 1971.
Egorov, Boris. “Queens of the Sky: The Girls Taking Russia’s Air Force by Storm.” Russia Beyond: Science & Tech, October 4, 2017. www.rb
th.com/science-and-tech/326321-queens-of-sky-girls.
Goyer, Mireille. “Five Decades of Female Pilots Statistics in the United States. How Did We Do?” Women of Aviation Week. Institute for Women of Aviation Worldwide, 2010. www.womenofaviationweek.org/five-decades-of-women-pilots-in-the-united-states-how-did-we-do.
Maksel, Rebecca. “Why Are There So Few Female Pilots? Identifying the Barriers That Stop Women from Flying.” Air & Space, February 6, 2015. www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/why-are-there-so-few-female-pilots-180954115.
Peck, Michael. “Russia Is Now Letting Women Become Fighter Pilots.” National Interest, August 20, 2017. www.nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-now-letting-women-become-fighter-pilots-21968.
Warren, Marcus. “MiG Pilot Flies in Face of Russian Male Prejudice.” Daily Telegraph, July 8, 1999.
Zegenhagen, Evelyn. “‘The Holy Desire to Serve the Poor and Tortured Fatherland’: German Women Motor Pilots of the Inter-War Era and Their Political Mission.” German Studies Review 30:3 (October 2007): 579–96.
GENERAL SOURCES
Abraham, Richard. “Mariia L. Bochkareva and the Russian Amazons of 1917.” In Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union, edited by Linda Edmondson, 124–44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Anderson, M. T. Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2015.
Bailes, K. E. “Technology and Legitimacy: Soviet Aviation and Stalinism in the 1930s.” Technology and Culture 17:1 (January 1976): 55–81.
Beevor, Antony, and L[y]uba Vinogradova. Editor’s gloss to A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941–1945. Edited and translated by Antony Beevor and L[y]uba Vinogradova. London: Pimlico, 2006.
Boyd, Alexander. The Soviet Air Force since 1918. London: MacDonald and Jane’s, 1977.
Clarke, John D. French Eagles, Soviet Heroes: The ‘Normandie-Niemen’ Squadrons on the Eastern Front. Thrupp, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2005.
Drabkin, Artem. Barbarossa & the Retreat to Moscow: Recollections of Fighter Pilots on the Eastern Front. Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Military, 2007.
Drury, Ian. “Stand at Ease! New Army Boots Will Be Issued for Women Soldiers.” Daily Mail, August 30, 2012. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2195560/New-Army-boots-issued-women-soldiers.html.
Edmondson, Linda. “Women’s Rights, Civil Rights and the Debate over Citizenship in the 1905 Revolution.” In Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union, edited by Linda Edmondson, 77–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Engel, Barbara Alpern, Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck, and Sona Hoisington. A Revolution of Their Own: Voices of Women in Soviet History. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998.
Everitt, Chris, and Martin Middlebrook. The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book. Barnsley, UK: Pen and Sword, 2014.
Faulkner, William. Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection. Vol. 4, Battle Cry, A Screenplay by William Faulkner, edited by Louis Daniel Brodsky and Robert W. Hamblin. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985.
Figes, Orlando. “The Women’s Protest That Sparked the Russian Revolution.” Guardian, March 8, 2017. www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/08/womens-protest-sparked-russian-revolution-international-womens-day.
Fleming, Candace. The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion & the Fall of Imperial Russia. New York: Schwartz & Wade Books, 2014.
Gunston, Bill. The Osprey Encyclopedia of Russian Aircraft 1875–1995. London: Osprey Aerospace, 1995.
Hamblin, Robert W., and Louis Daniel Brodsky. Introduction to Battle Cry, A Screenplay by William Faulkner, xv–xliii. Vol. 4 of Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection, edited by Louis Daniel Brodsky and Robert W. Hamblin. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985.
Hardesty, Von, and Ilya Grinberg. Red Phoenix Rising: The Soviet Air Force in World War II. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012.
Hook, Alex. World War II Day by Day. Rochester, UK: Grange Books, 2004.
LaFeber, Walter, and Richard Polenberg. The American Century: A History of the United States Since the 1890s. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 1979.
Legge, Charles. “Aces Who Fired First.” Scottish Daily Mail, April 12, 2016.
Lejenäs, Harald. “The Severe Winter in Europe 1941–1942: The Large-Scale Circulation, Cut-off Lows, and Blocking.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 70:3 (March 1989): 271–81.
McNeal, Robert H. “The Early Decrees of Zhenotdel.” In Women in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, edited by Tova Yedlin, 75–86. New York: Praeger, 1980.
Montefiore, Simon Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003.
Overy, Richard. Russia’s War. London: Penguin Books 1999.
Petrone, Karen. Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
Reichhardt, Tony. “The First Aerial Combat Victory: Airplane vs. Airplane over France in 1914.” Air & Space, October 4, 2014. www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/first-aerial-combat-victory-180952933.
Rury, John. “Vocationalism for Home and Work: Women’s Education in the United States, 1880–1930.” History of Education Quarterly 24:1 (Spring 1984): 21–44.
Scarborough, Rowan. “U.S. Military Pressed to Design Special Line of Combat Boots Just for Women.” Washington Times, May 14, 2015. www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/may/14/military-pressed-to-design-line-of-women-friendly-.
Schneider, Steven P. “Lost Generation.” In A William Faulkner Encyclopedia, edited by Robert W. Hamblin and Charles A. Peek, 234–37. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.
Stites, Richard. The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860–1930. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.
Stolfi, Russel H. S. “Chance in History: The Russian Winter of 1941–1942.” History 65:214 (1980): 214–28.
Wetterhahn, Ralph. “Kursk: The Greatest Tank Battle in History Might Have Ended Differently Had It Not Been for the Action in the Air.” Air & Space, April/May 2015.
Wilde, Meta Carpenter, and Orin Borsten. “Faulkner: Hollywood: 1943.” In Battle Cry, A Screenplay by William Faulkner, ix–xiv. Vol. 4 of Faulkner: A Comprehensive Guide to the Brodsky Collection, edited by Louis Daniel Brodsky and Robert W. Hamblin. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985.
FILMS
The Night Witches: Soviet Air Women in World War II. Documentary film, produced and directed by Sissi Hüetlin and Elizabeth McKay. London: Move a Mountain Productions, 1994.
“Night Witches” in the Sky (in Russian as V nebe “Nochnye bed’my”). Produced and directed by Yevgeniya Andreyevna Zhigulenko. Moscow: Kinstudiia im. M. Gorkogo, 1981.
Wasps & Witches: Women Pilots of World War II. Documentary film, produced and directed by Jamie Doran. New York: Films Media Group, 2012.
Author’s Note: A Few Excuses and a Lot of Gratitude
I made up stories before I went to school. I’d written two “novels” before I got my high school diploma. So you could say I was a fiction writer first.
But I spent seven years working on a PhD in Folklore and Folklife, and so my actual training is as an academic. The need to quote my sources has stuck, as anyone who’s read the back matter to my novels will tell you. Indeed, my own children will tell you this—from grade school onward I have insisted they give full source credit for every piece of research they produce. As they’ve both found, if you’re planning to do a research project ever, it’s actually a very useful habit to practice from an early age.
But the reason I like writing fiction has nothing to do with avoiding citations. I like fiction because you can bend things. You can speculate. You can claim connections that haven’t been proven or don’t even have any basis in fact. As a credible historian, you have to base your story on what you know. (My most recent piece of published fiction suggests that the Grand Duchess
Anastasia Romanova became a fighter pilot—not an idea I could have entertained as a historian.)
My biggest stumbling block to writing A Thousand Sisters is that I don’t read Russian. There are primary sources in Russian to which I have not had access, and of which I would have been able to make only limited use if I had. Pulling together a thorough history of Marina Raskova’s regiments is an impossible task for a non–Russian speaker who is utterly reliant on translators. I am very lucky that there are excellent source materials already translated, as well as some excellent original studies in English by scholars who do read Russian—Anna Krylova and Reina Pennington in particular.
Ultimately, A Thousand Sisters isn’t academic research. It’s an accessible (I hope) introduction to a fascinating topic, and it’s aimed at young readers who mostly won’t have any more Russian than I do. There is always room for a more complete treatment of Raskova’s regiments. But I am proud of what I’ve done here, and I do hope my work can be considered a contribution to the existing literature.
One problem I ran into during my research is that some of my key sources, notably those by Kazimiera J. Cottam and Anna Noggle, don’t have indexes. Before I wrote a word of A Thousand Sisters, I had to create a sort of rudimentary master index listing each woman aviator and her appearance in a number of different books. It wasn’t the most complete or accurate system, but I would have been utterly lost without it. I hope that readers using A Thousand Sisters for their own research will find my source notes to be a useful cross-reference.
Russian is a complicated language. My editors and I have mostly used the BGN (United States Board on Geographic Names) system to transliterate Russian names and words, but sometimes we’ve deviated from this system for the sake of simplicity or clarity. Occasionally I’ve used an English variation on a Russian name because it’s already in common use in English (for example, “Maria” rather than “Mariya” Bochkareva). Bearing in mind that the majority of my readers will find individual Russian names unfamiliar and possibly difficult, I’ve tried to simplify matters by mostly using first names and unmarried family names in the text (few of the young women in these pages were already married during their wartime aviation exploits, so didn’t have married names until after the war). I’ve also chosen to use nicknames for many of the women mentioned in the text—partly because they used these names themselves in fondness and familiarity, partly because they add a friendly level of informality for the reader, and partly because they reduce the difficulty of unfamiliar Russian names.
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