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The Women's Battalion (also known as the Women's Battalion of Death) was an all-female military unit created in 1917 by the newly formed Russian Provisional Government after the February Revolution. They were involved in a variety of campaigns, and were among the last of the Provisional Government's defenders during the Bolshevik Revolution on the night of November 7 1917.
Formation
The Women's Battalion was formed on May 21, 1917, in Mariynski Theater of the pre-1918 Russian capitol of Petrograd, Russia. Its leader, a peasant sergeant named Maria Bachkarova, recruited women between the ages of 13 and 25 to fight the revolutionary Bolshevik Party. She appealed for support in a series of lucrative public meetings, enlisting approximately 2,000 soldiers by May 29.
Most of the battalion were from the middle class, although there were about one hundred peasants and a number of working women. It was the hope of Sergeant Bachkarova that the Women's Battalion would shame men into fighting, and it proved a beacon for feminists of the time.
The Battalion was never part of the White Army, Green Army, or Black Army, the other Russian political groups fighting the Bolsheviks.
Action
The Women's Battalion was called into action against the Germans during the June Offensive. They were assigned to the 525th Kuriag-Daryjuski Regiment and occupied an abandoned trench near Kovno. Although the offensive was delayed for many hours by pacifist-aggressors within the Russian army, the Women's Battalion was able to persuade some three hundred men to join their ranks and led the attack near dusk.
The battalion pushed past three trenches into German territory, where the trailing Russian army discovered a hidden stash of vodka and became dangerously drunk. The newly-promoted Lieutenant Bachkarova ordered that any further stashes be destroyed.
Outnumbered and unsupported, the battalion met stiff resistance from the Germans and were repelled. They returned to their original lines with two hundred prisoners and minimal casualties, six killed and thirty wounded. Bachkarvona herself was knocked unconscious by an artillery shell and was captured.
The Women's Battalion was disbanded after a failed political revolution known as the Kornilov Affair. Its leader, General Lavr Kornilov, had been strongly supported by Bachkarova, and the Women's Battalion were identified as potential sympathizers.
Bolshevik Revolution
The majority of the battalion's members were reformed as the First Petrograd Women's Battalion. This group was at the Winter Palace on the night of the Bolshevik Revolution, along with an untrained cadet detachment and a bicycle regiment. They mounted a stiff resistance but ultimately fell, although there were only 5 deaths in the storming of the Winter Palace.
The triumphant Bolsheviks claimed that the women in the battalion were witches and officially disbanded the group. Fearing persecution, the remaining soldiers slipped away in the night, where they disappeared without trace. The battalion flag was given to a young male soldier, who was sworn to defend it with his life; he was never heard from again.
External links
"Women's Battalion"