Introduction: “We Are Talking Not about Individual Female Volunteers but about Thousands…”

At the beginning of 1942, Major General Daniil Zhuravlev, Commander-in-Chief of the Moscow antiaircraft ground troops, was summoned to the office of Aleksandr Shcherbakov, head of the Moscow Party organization and member of the Party Central Committee. Zhuravlev hurried to the Moscow Party headquarters without knowing the reason for his sudden summons. As Zhuravlev recalled in his memoirs, the meeting began with the usual inquiries about the state of the capital's antiaircraft defenses. Then Shcherbakov posed a sudden question: “What would you say, Comrade Zhuravlev, if we send women to serve in your troops?” Taken aback, Zhuravlev had no ready answer. Without waiting for his reply, Shcherbakov hurried to clarify the numerical dimensions of the proposition: “I want to make sure [that you understand], we are talking not about individual female volunteers but about thousands.”

Shcherbakov also quickly made it clear that the matter was not open for discussion. The decision to bring thousands of female volunteers into the antiaircraft ground troops, he said, was already “approved, in principle,” at the top of the Stalinist government – in the Party Central Committee. Zhuravlev's task was to begin immediately attending to the practical realization of women's entrance into his troops and to begin thinking of raising women volunteers into women soldiers.