author
Mariia Bochkareva
1889–1920
A peasant-born Russian soldier who broke one barrier after another, she fought on the front in World War I and went on to form the Women's Battalion of Death. Her life moved at the speed of revolution, carrying her from poverty and battlefield fame to a violent end in the Russian Civil War.
1 Audiobook
Yashka : My life as peasant, exile and soldier
by Mariia Bochkareva, Isaac Don Levine
About the author
Born in 1889, Mariia Bochkareva rose from a poor peasant background to become one of the most striking military figures of her time. During World War I, she joined the Imperial Russian Army and earned a reputation for personal bravery under fire, something almost unheard of for a woman in combat service in Russia then.
She is best known for organizing the Women's Battalion of Death in 1917, an all-female unit created in the hope of inspiring exhausted male troops to keep fighting. Her story later reached an international audience through the memoir Yashka: My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile.
Bochkareva's life ended amid the chaos of the Russian Civil War, when she was executed in 1920. Even so, she remains remembered as a determined and unusual figure whose life captures the upheaval, courage, and tragedy of revolutionary Russia.