The Historic Roles of Russian Women

Non-Russian men who want to date Russian women can sometimes have a less-than-realistic view of them. Many men who came of age during the Cold War may see women from Russia as gorgeous supermodels who are also skilled spies.

For sure, there have been beautiful women who have been spies throughout Russia’s history. But that’s not all they have been, nor has it been the only role they’ve played throughout history.

People often take a simplistic view of history and look at it through the lens of big events and great men. There’s nothing entirely wrong with that, big events draw attention and these men are often already in positions of power, positions where they can affect the kind of change needed to become remembered, like how Winston Churchill was born to a British aristocrat who was also a member of Parliament and how Alexander the Great was born to the King of Macedonia.

But history is more than just great men and big events. History is also shaped by more feminine hands. Russian history, for example, is steeped in women who have guided the country or captured public imagination. Women who, for one reason or another, rose above the roles set for them.

Russian women have held a great number of roles in Russian society throughout the country’s history; they’ve been everything from lowly, nameless peasants to holding the highest of titles. They’ve been empresses, grand duchesses, revolutionaries, and war heroes.

Russian society sets roles for women. But history has shown that women don’t always follow those roles. Many women who broke away from their assigned roles were faced with scorn, ridicule, and fell victim to salacious gossip.

But some women who broke the mold made for them went on to etch their names forever in the history books.

<H2> Empress Catherine the Great

One of the greatest women in Russian history, possibly even the greatest, wasn’t even technically Russian. Catherine the Great, the longest reigning female monarch in Russia, was born in what is now Poland. She was Russian by marriage, being betrothed to her second cousin Peter III.

Now, when she got to Russia instead of a strapping Emperor of a husband, what she found was a man more concerned with wearing Prussian military uniforms and throwing parades than actually ruling the country, so she overthrew him in a coup in 1762.

There’s a popular myth that she died when she was crushed by a horse which she was attempting to have relations with. The truth is far less salacious, as she died from a stroke at the age of 67, a mundane and normal way to die.

Grand Duchess Anastasia

There’s probably not a single Russian woman who’s captured the public imagination more than Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna. When the Bolsheviks overthrew the monarchy, Anastasia was imprisoned in Yekaterinburg along with her family.

They were summarily executed.

But rumors of her survival persisted, since her body was not among her family’s remains with some even pointing out that her name itself meant she will rise again. The rumors became so strong that several women came forward, purporting to be her in order to cash in on what remained of her family’s fortunes.

The rumors were so strong that a number of films and stage plays depicting her survival and life after were produced and many of them found great critical and financial success.

In 2007, two skeletons were discovered in Yekaterinburg. DNA testing concluded that the bodies belonged to Alexei Nikolaevich and one of his sisters. And with that, all the bodies of the Romanov family were accounted for, disproving the rumors of Anastasia’s survival.

Inessa Armand

Inessa Armand was born in Russia nor did she have Russian blood. She was three-quarters French and one-quarter English and was born in Paris. But when her father died when she was young, she moved to Moscow to live with her aunt and grandmother.

A communist and a feminist, Inessa Armand became an active member of the Bolsheviks, becoming Vladimir Lenin’s partner and so important to the party’s activities and future that some even referred to her as his right hand.

Fervent as she was, Armand was known to become inactive in her activism from time to time for the sake of her children.

Armand would die of cholera at the age of 46.

World War II

World War II put a huge strain on Russia. The country suffered quite a lot at the hands of the German war machine. In fact, some reports state that around two-thirds of Germany’s military power was stationed on the eastern front of the war.

To say that the situation in Russia during the Second World War was bad would be an understatement. Whole cities were razed, the countryside overrun with battle, and Russia persisted, in part because its women persisted.

With manpower low and getting lower every day, women began fighting on the frontlines of the war serving in almost all roles. Whether it was as machine gunners, air crews, tank drivers, and especially snipers, women were on the front lines of the war.

Two such women were Roza Shanina and Lydumila Pavlichenko. Both were snipers with high body counts, with Shanina racking up 59 confirmed kills, including 12 during a single battle, and Pavlichenko having a confirmed body count of 309, making her the deadliest female sniper in recorded history and one of the deadliest snipers in general.

Shanina did not survive the war, being killed by German fire in East Prussia. Pavlichenko would survive the war, though she was injured badly enough that she was evacuated to Moscow and served as a researcher in the Soviet Navy.

The wartime service of these women, as well as countless others whose names are not quite as well-known, helped turn the tide of the war. Both women were given high military honors. Shanina received the Order of Glory whilst Pavchenko was given the title Hero of the Soviet Union.

Pavlichenko would die of a stroke at 58 years old.

To say that Russian women can be easily categorized is not true. History has shown that they have been everything and anything. So a guy who wants to be with one needs to be ready to be with someone who contains multitudes, who can play the role society sets for her but also break away from it.