Mariia Bochkareva

Born in 1889 in the Russian Empire, she rose from a poor rural background to become an unlikely wartime leader. During World War I, she joined the Russian army and earned attention for her bravery at the front, breaking sharply with the expectations placed on women in her time.

She is best known for forming the Women’s Battalion of Death in 1917, a unit created to inspire exhausted troops and defend the collapsing war effort after the February Revolution. Her memoir, Yashka: My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile, helped carry her story far beyond Russia.

After the revolutions of 1917, her path became even more dramatic. She traveled abroad, met prominent political figures, and was eventually captured during the Russian Civil War; sources generally state that she was executed in 1920.