I think you might appreciate the book The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich. It's an oral history of Soviet women who fought in WW2. Some of them felt a lot like Pavlichenko did, and some of them did not.
One of the scenes that stuck with me was a sniper explaining that she stopped feeling sorry about killing Germans after seeing a burned down house where Soviet POW had been burned (alive?) by the Germans. And yet when she was asked by some guys to kill a foal they saw in the woods because everyone was starving, she felt like an absolute monster. (Then the other women in her unit don't touch the foal-soup, she bursts into tears when she sees they aren't eating, and to make her feel better they gobble it down.)
I think where I'm going with this is that everybody reacts differently in such "extreme" situations, and many of the people had complex thoughts about it even during the horror. I know the Soviets' harsh response is kinda valorised on here (and tbh I think it's justified to some extent), but it just wasn't the case that everyone felt the same way about it. My dad says my grandpa didn't speak much about the war, but did say that he "didn't like it when our guys tied up the Germans and left them on a termite/anthill" haha... It's a really complicated topic. (And some of the women had an extra layer of guilt because the idea that women are the creators of life was ingrained in them; one woman said her period stopped for a while during/after the war and she thought she had been cursed by God for killing.) I dunno how I'd react in such a situation tbh - if I'd feel bad about killing fascists, if I'd have enough sensitivity left to feel bad about killing a foal. Idk. Reading the book, I cried a lot both for what was done to them and what they had to do.
I think you might appreciate the book The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich. It's an oral history of Soviet women who fought in WW2. Some of them felt a lot like Pavlichenko did, and some of them did not.
One of the scenes that stuck with me was a sniper explaining that she stopped feeling sorry about killing Germans after seeing a burned down house where Soviet POW had been burned (alive?) by the Germans. And yet when she was asked by some guys to kill a foal they saw in the woods because everyone was starving, she felt like an absolute monster. (Then the other women in her unit don't touch the foal-soup, she bursts into tears when she sees they aren't eating, and to make her feel better they gobble it down.)
I think where I'm going with this is that everybody reacts differently in such "extreme" situations, and many of the people had complex thoughts about it even during the horror. I know the Soviets' harsh response is kinda valorised on here (and tbh I think it's justified to some extent), but it just wasn't the case that everyone felt the same way about it. My dad says my grandpa didn't speak much about the war, but did say that he "didn't like it when our guys tied up the Germans and left them on a termite/anthill" haha... It's a really complicated topic. (And some of the women had an extra layer of guilt because the idea that women are the creators of life was ingrained in them; one woman said her period stopped for a while during/after the war and she thought she had been cursed by God for killing.) I dunno how I'd react in such a situation tbh - if I'd feel bad about killing fascists, if I'd have enough sensitivity left to feel bad about killing a foal. Idk. Reading the book, I cried a lot both for what was done to them and what they had to do.
Just watched a video where Hakim recommends that book.