Women in War: Deaths in "Non-Combat" Positions. How many Soviet women died in the Afghan war Thrown out like recycled slag

The participation of Soviet women in the Afghan conflict was not particularly advertised. Severe male faces are depicted on numerous steles and obelisks in memory of that war.

Today, a civilian nurse who had been ill with typhoid fever near Kabul, or a military saleswoman wounded by a stray shrapnel on her way to a combat unit, are deprived of additional benefits. There are benefits for officers and male privates, even if they were in charge of a warehouse or repaired cars. However, there were women in Afghanistan. They dutifully performed their work, steadfastly endured the hardships and dangers of life in the war and, of course, died.

How women got to Afghanistan

The female soldiers were sent to Afghanistan by order of the command. In the early 1980s, there were up to 1.5% of women in uniform in the Soviet army. If a woman had the necessary skills, she could be sent to a hot spot, often regardless of her desire: "The motherland said - it is necessary, the Komsomol answered - there is!"

Nurse Tatyana Evpatova recalls that in the early 1980s it was very difficult to get abroad. One of the ways is to apply through the military registration and enlistment office for service in Soviet troops with deployment in Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Mongolia, Poland. Tatyana dreamed of seeing Germany and filed in 1980 required documents. After 2.5 years, she was invited to the draft board and offered to go to Afghanistan.

Tatyana was forced to agree, and she was sent as an operating room and dressing nurse to Faizabad. Returning to the Union, Evpatova abandoned medicine forever and became a philologist.

Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs could also get into Afghanistan - among them there were also a small number of women. In addition, the Ministry of Defense recruited civilian employees of the Soviet Army for service as part of a limited contingent. Civilians, including women, were contracted and flown to Kabul and from there to duty stations around the country.

What was instructed to women in hot spots

Women soldiers were sent to Afghanistan as translators, ciphers, signalmen, archivists, and employees of the logistics bases in Kabul and Puli Khumri. Many women worked as paramedics, nurses and doctors in front-line medical units and hospitals.

Civil servants received positions in military offices, regimental libraries, laundries, worked as cooks, waitresses in canteens. In Jalalabad, the commander of the 66th separate motorized rifle brigade managed to find a secretary-typist, who was also a hairdresser for the soldiers of the unit. Among the paramedics and nurses, there were also civilian women.

Under what conditions did the weaker sex serve?

The war does not distinguish by age, profession and gender - a cook, a salesman, a nurse in the same way came under fire, exploded on mines, and burned in wrecked planes. In everyday life, they had to cope with the numerous difficulties of a nomadic, unsettled life: a toilet-booth, a shower from an iron barrel with water in a fence covered with tarpaulin.

“Living rooms, operating rooms, outpatient clinics and a hospital were located in canvas tents. At night, fat rats ran between the outer and lower layers of the tents. Some fell through the shabby fabric and fell down. We had to invent gauze curtains so that these creatures did not fall on the naked body, recalls nurse Tatyana Evpatova. - In summer, even at night it was above plus 40 degrees - they covered themselves with wet sheets. Already in October frosts hit - we had to sleep in straight pea jackets. Dresses from the heat and sweat turned into rags - having obtained chintz in the military, we sewed simple overalls.

Special assignments are a delicate matter

Some women coped with tasks of unimaginable complexity, where experienced men failed. Tajik Mavlyuda Tursunova arrived in the west of Afghanistan at the age of 24 (her division was stationed in Herat and Shindand). She served in the 7th Directorate of the Main Political Directorate of the SA and Navy, which was engaged in special propaganda.

Mavlyuda spoke excellent mother tongue, and more Tajiks lived in Afghanistan than in the USSR. Komsomol member Tursunova knew many Islamic prayers by heart. Shortly before leaving for the war, she buried her father and listened to memorial prayers read by the mullah every week for a whole year. Her memory did not fail her.

Tursunova, the instructor of the political department, was given the task of convincing women and children that the Shuravi were their friends. A fragile girl boldly walked around the villages, she was allowed into the women's houses. One of the Afghans agreed to confirm that he knew her as a small child, and after her parents took her to Kabul. To direct questions, Tursunova confidently called herself an Afghan.

The plane in which Tursunova flew from Kabul was shot down on takeoff, but the pilot managed to land on a minefield. Miraculously, everyone survived, but already in the Union, Mavluda was paralyzed - she caught up with a shell shock. Luckily, the doctors were able to get her back on her feet. Tursunova was awarded the Order of Honor, the Afghan medals "10 years of the Saur Revolution" and "From the grateful Afghan people", the medal "For Courage".

How many were

To this day, there is no accurate official statistics on the number of civilian and military women who participated in the Afghan war. There is information about 20-21 thousand people. 1350 women who served in Afghanistan were awarded orders and medals of the USSR.

Information collected by enthusiasts confirms the death of 54 to 60 women in Afghanistan. Among them are four ensigns and 48 civilian employees. Some were blown up by mines, came under fire, others died from illness or accidents. Alla Smolina spent three years in Afghanistan, served as the head of the office in the military prosecutor's office of the Jalalabad garrison. For many years she has been scrupulously collecting and publishing information about heroines forgotten by her homeland - saleswomen, nurses, cooks, waitresses.

Typist Valentina Lakhteeva from Vitebsk voluntarily went to Afghanistan in February 1985. A month and a half later, she died near Puli-Khumri during the shelling of a military unit. Paramedic Galina Shakleina from the Kirov region served for a year in a military hospital in Northern Kunduz and died of blood poisoning. Nurse Tatyana Kuzmina from Chita served for a year and a half in the medical clinic of Jalalabad. She drowned in a mountain river while saving an Afghan child. Not awarded.

Didn't make it to the wedding

The heart and feelings cannot be turned off even in war. Unmarried girls or single mothers often met their love in Afghanistan. Many couples did not want to wait to return to the Union to get married. The waitress of the canteen for the flight crew, Natalya Glushak, and the officer of the communications company, Yuri Tsurka, decided to register their marriage at the Soviet consulate in Kabul and drove there from Jalalabad with a convoy of armored personnel carriers.

Shortly after leaving the checkpoint of the unit, the convoy ran into an ambush of the Mujahideen and came under heavy fire. The lovers died on the spot - in vain at the consulate they waited until late for the couple to register the marriage.

But not all girls died at the hands of the enemy. A former Afghan soldier recalls: “Natasha, an employee of the military department in Kunduz, was shot dead by her boyfriend, the head of the Special Department from Hairatan. He himself shot himself half an hour later. He was posthumously awarded the Order of the Red Banner, and an order was read about her in front of the unit, calling her a "dangerous currency speculator."

On the same topic:

What did Soviet women do on Afghan war How Soviet women fought in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan lasted from December 25, 1979 to February 15, 1989. In November 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR declared an amnesty for all crimes committed by Soviet military personnel in Afghanistan.

"... in the village, one of the sergeants, without hiding his emotions, noted that "youngsters are good."
The words of the sergeant, like a spark, set fire to everyone else, and then, throwing off his greatcoat, he moved towards one of the women:
- Row, guys!
In front of the elders and children, our internationalists mocked women to their heart's content. The rape lasted two hours. The kids, huddled in a corner, screamed and squealed, trying to somehow help their mothers. The old men, trembling, prayed, asking their God for mercy and salvation.
Then the sergeant commanded: "Fire!" - and first shot at the woman he had just raped. They quickly finished off everyone else. Then, on the orders of K., they poured fuel from the BMP's gas tank, doused the corpses with it, threw clothes and rags that fell under the arm, meager wooden furniture was also used - and set on fire. A flame flared up inside the samanka ... "

"... order: poison the wells that we find. Let them die to hell!
And how to poison? Take a live dog, for example. And you throw it there. Cadaverous poison will then do its work ... "

"... we have always been with knives.
- Why?
- And because. Whoever saw the group is not a tenant!
- What does it mean?
- This is the law of special forces. When the group is on a mission, no one should see it. It's not easy to kill a man, though. Especially when it’s not some brutal dushman there, but an old man is standing and looking at you. And all the same. Whoever saw the group is not a tenant. It was an iron law...

"... yes, on caravans, you take a fly and point with your hand, here, they say, go. He comes up, you search him, and what to do with him next? Gather them together? Bind them? Sit with them, guard? Why is this necessary "Searched and everything - at a loss. With knives. In the end, the feeling of pity in us disappeared, it was exterminated. In practice, it was completely gone. It came to such situations when they even argued with each other, like, they say, you were the last time cleaned up, now let me..."

"... where did this girl in a sheepskin coat with a couple or three sheep come from?
Lyokha, seeing the movement in front of him, and realizing that the group was detected, completed his combat mission - he took aim and fired.
Cotton. Shot well. A US bullet [at a reduced speed] of 7.62 caliber flew into the girl's head, disfiguring this divine creation beyond recognition. The ensign coolly pushed the body with his foot to check the hands of the corpse. There is nothing in them but a twig.
I saw only out of the corner of my eye how a small, somehow awkward, leg was still twitching. And then it froze...

"... we tied the Afghan with a rope to an armored personnel carrier and dragged him along like a sack all day long, shot at him from machine guns on the way, and when only one leg and half of his body were left, we cut the rope ..."

"... shelling of the village from the artillery division began, and the infantry was told to prepare for combing. At first, the inhabitants rushed to the crevice, but the approach to it was mined, and they began to be blown up by mines, after which they rushed back to the village.
We could see from above how they rush around the village among the explosions. Then, in general, x ... I didn’t understand it, all the civilians who survived rushed straight to our blocks. We all oh ... ate! What to do?! And then one of us fired a machine gun at the crowd, and everyone else started firing. For peaceful..."

"... remembering the burning villages and the screams of civilians trying to escape from bullets and explosions. Before my eyes were terrible pictures: the corpses of children of old people and women, the clang of tank caterpillars winding their guts on tracks, the crunch of human bones under the onslaught of a multi-ton colossus, and around blood, fire and gunfire..."

"...sometimes they hung it in a rubber loop to the barrel of a tank gun, so that a person could only touch the ground with his toes. They hooked the wires of a field telephone to others and twisted the handle, generating a current..."

"... for the entire time of service in Afghanistan (almost a year and a half) starting from December 1979, I heard so many stories about how our paratroopers killed the civilian population just like that, that they simply cannot be counted, and I have never heard that our soldiers were saved one of the Afghans - among the soldiers, such an act would be regarded as aiding the enemies.
Even during the December coup in Kabul, which lasted all night on December 27, 1979, some paratroopers shot at unarmed people who were seen on the streets - then, without a shadow of regret, they cheerfully recalled this as funny cases ... "

"... two months after the introduction of troops - on February 29, 1980 - the first military operation began in the province of Kunar. The main striking force was the paratroopers of our regiment - 300 soldiers who parachuted from helicopters on a high mountain plateau and went down to restore order. How can I the participants of that operation said, they put things in order as follows: they destroyed food supplies in the villages, killed all the livestock; usually, before entering the house, they threw a grenade there, then they shot with a fan in all directions - only after that they looked who was there; everyone men and even teenagers were immediately shot on the spot. The operation lasted almost two weeks, how many people were killed then - no one counted ... "

The corpses of three Afghans mistaken for "spirits" - two men and a woman

"... in the second half of December 1980, they surrounded a large settlement (presumably Tarinkot) in a semicircle. So they stood around three days. By this time, artillery and Grad multiple rocket launchers had been brought up.
On December 20, the operation began: a blow from the "Grad" and artillery was struck at the settlement. After the first volleys, the kishlak plunged into a continuous cloud of dust. shelling locality continued almost continuously. Residents, in order to escape from the explosions of shells, ran from the village into the field. But there they began to shoot from machine guns, BMD guns, four "Shilka" (self-propelled units with four twin heavy machine guns) fired non-stop, almost all the soldiers fired from their machine guns, killing everyone: including women and children.
After the shelling, the brigade entered the village and finished off the rest of the inhabitants there. When the military operation ended, the whole earth around was strewn with the corpses of people. They counted something like three thousand bodies ... "

"... what our paratroopers were doing in remote areas of Afghanistan was complete arbitrariness. Since the summer of 1980, the 3rd battalion of our regiment was sent to Kandahar province to patrol the territory. Without fear of anyone, they calmly drove along the roads and the desert Kandahar and could, without any clarification, kill any person who met on their way ... "

"... the Afghan went his own way. The only weapon the Afghan had was a stick with which he drove a donkey. A column of our paratroopers was driving along this road. He was killed just like that, with machine gun fire, without leaving the BMDshek armor.
The column stopped. One paratrooper came up and cut off the ears of the dead Afghan - in memory of his military exploits. Then a mine was placed under the corpse of the Afghan, for the one who finds this body. Only this time the idea did not work - when the column started off, someone could not resist and finally fired a burst at the corpse from a machine gun - the mine exploded and tore the Afghan's body to pieces ... "

"... the caravans they met were searched, and if they found weapons, they killed all the people who were in the caravan. cartridge, and, pretending that this cartridge was found in the pocket or in the things of the Afghan, they presented it to the Afghan as evidence of his guilt.
Now it was possible to mock: after listening to a person warmly making excuses, convincing that the cartridge was not his, they began to beat him, then watched him beg on his knees for mercy, but they beat him again and in the end - they still shot him. Then they killed the rest of the people who were in the caravan ... "

"... it all started with the fact that on February 22, 1980, in Kabul, in broad daylight, Senior Lieutenant Alexander Vovk, a senior instructor in the Komsomol of the political department of the 103rd Airborne Division, was killed.
This happened near the "Green Market", where Vovk arrived in an UAZ vehicle together with the air defense chief of the 103rd Airborne Division, Colonel Yuri Dvugroshev. They did not fulfill any task, but, most likely, they simply wanted to buy something in the market. They were in the car when suddenly one shot was fired - the bullet hit Vovk. Dvugroshev and the soldier-driver did not even understand where they were shooting from, and quickly left this place. However, Vovk's wound turned out to be fatal, and he died almost immediately.
And then something happened that shook the whole city. Upon learning of the death of their comrade, a group of officers and ensigns of the 357th Airborne Regiment, led by the regiment's deputy commander, Major Vitaly Zababurin, got into armored personnel carriers and went to the scene to deal with local residents. But, having arrived at the place, they did not bother to search for the culprit, but in a hot head decided to simply punish everyone who was there. Moving along the street, they began to smash and crush everything in their path: they threw grenades at houses, fired from machine guns and machine guns on armored personnel carriers. Dozens of innocent people fell under the hot hand of officers.
The massacre ended, but the news of the bloody pogrom quickly spread throughout the city. The streets of Kabul began to flood thousands of indignant citizens, riots began. At that time, I was on the territory of the government residence, behind the high stone wall of the Palace of the Peoples. I will never forget that wild howl of the crowd, inspiring fear, from which the blood ran cold. The feeling was the worst...
The rebellion was crushed within two days. Hundreds of Kabul residents were killed. However, the real instigators of those riots, who massacred innocent people, remained in the shadows ... "

"... one of the battalions took prisoners, loaded them into MI-8 and sent them to the base. Having radioed that they had been sent to the brigade. The senior officer of the brigade, who received the radiogram, asked:
- On x .... I need them here?
We contacted the escort officer flying in the cabin of the helicopter. He himself did not know what to do with the prisoners and decided to let them go. From a height of 2000 meters ... "

"... the only more or less significant reason that forced the special forces to kill civilian Afghans was due to" precautionary measures ". Being in the desert or mountains on a combat mission in isolation from the main forces, any special forces group could not allow its location to be revealed From a random traveler, whether a shepherd or a picker of brushwood, who noticed an ambush of special forces or his parking lot, a very real threat emanated ... "

"... during the flight around our area of responsibility, the Afghan bus did not stop after the third warning burst. Well, they "soaked" it with NURSs and machine guns, and there were old men, women and children. Only forty-three corpses. We then counted. One the driver survived...

"... our group opened fire on the caravan on the order of the lieutenant. I heard the screams of women. After examining the corpses, it became clear that the caravan was peaceful..."

"... Senior Lieutenant Volodya Molchanov, he was introduced to the Hero from our battalion in 1980 - he hated Muslims. He threw Afghans into the gorge, putting grenades in their pockets, they did not even reach the ground ..."

"... camp, building. Zamkombat pushes the speech:
- We fly out to opium villages, everyone shoots - women, children. Civilians - no!
They understood the team - to work for destruction.
Landed from helicopters. From the air, no cover, the sweep begins:
- Tra-ta-ta! Tra-ta-ta!
Shooting from all sides, not understanding, you fall, you throw a grenade at the duval:
- Baba!!!
Jumping, shooting, dust, screams, corpses under your feet, blood on the walls. Like a car, not a minute in place, jump, jump. The kishlak is big. In optics, women in headscarves, children. No confusion, pull the trigger. Cleaned all day...

"... once we were lifted up on five "turntables" ... They were thrown out near a mountain village. Well, we stretched out in groups and, interacting in pairs, went to scratch the village.
In fact, they shot at everything that moved. Before you enter behind the duval or anywhere, in general, before you look or look anywhere, be sure to throw a grenade - "efka" or RGD. And so you throw, you enter, and there are women and children ... "

An Afghan caravan destroyed without any clarification.

"... the soldiers sawed and chopped apple trees, pears, quince, hazel. Trees were blown up in two girths with plastids so as not to suffer for a long time. The tractor that came to the rescue filled up massive fences-duvals. Gradually we won back the living space for the construction of the "people's" government of socialism in medieval society. Our insolent and ate to such an extent that they selected only the largest and juiciest grapes, and threw the rest away. The green mass squelched underfoot. Sneakers were covered with a sweet shell, turning into bait for bees and wasps. Fighters sometimes even washed their hands with grapes .
We - expanse, and local dekhkans (peasants) - grief and tears. The only means of subsistence, after all. Having broken down the roadside villages, mined the karezes and blown up suspicious ruins, platoons and companies were now crawling out onto the highway. The Afghans, clinging to the side of the road, looked with horror at the results of our invasion of the Greenland. They were talking anxiously among themselves, apparently worried. Here come these civilized people and destroyed their native slums.
The column slowly moved towards Kabul, with the realization of a duty fulfilled ... "

"... the next day, the battalions descended from the mountains to the village. A route went through it to the equipment waiting in the valley. Life after our visit to the village froze completely. Cows, horses, donkeys lay everywhere, here and there, shot from machine guns. These are paratroopers vented on them the accumulated anger and rage.After we left the settlement, the roofs of houses and sheds in the yards smoked and burned.
Heck! You can't really set fire to these dwellings. One clay and stones. Clay floor, clay walls, clay steps. Only the mats on the floor are burning, and those woven from vines and bed branches. Misery and poverty all around. Paradox! According to our Marxist ideology, exactly those people live here, for the sake of whom the fire of the world revolution was started. These are their interests. Soviet army came to defend, fulfilling an international duty ... "

"... I also had to participate in negotiations with field commanders. I usually posted a map of Afghanistan with the designation of the places of concentration of the Dushman detachments, pointed to it and asked:
- Ahmad, do you see these two villages? We know that in one you have three wives and eleven children. In the other, two more wives and three children. You see, there are two divisions of Grad rocket launchers nearby. One shot from your side, and villages with wives and children will be destroyed. Understood?..."

"... from the air it was impossible to assess the successes presented in the reports, but the troops who continued on their way to the pass escorted hundreds of bodies of dead civilians carried to the road by the Afghans, so that we could enjoy the contemplation of what we had done..."

"... the three of them went on a water cart to the river. They scoop with buckets. The process is long. On the other side, a girl appears. They raped, killed - her and her old grandfather. He tried to prevent. The village broke loose, went to Pakistan. necessary..."

"... the very prestige of service in the units of the Soviet military intelligence obliged every soldier and special forces officer to do a lot. They were little interested in issues of ideology and politics. They were not tormented by the problem of "how moral this war is." Such concepts as "internationalism", " duty to help the brotherly people of Afghanistan" for the special forces were just political phraseology, an empty phrase. The requirements to observe the rule of law and humanity in relation to the local population were perceived by many special forces as a thing incompatible with the order to give a result ... "

"... then we were given medals "From the grateful Afghan people" at home. Black humor!
At the presentation in the district administration (there were a hundred of our people), I asked to speak and asked:
- Who among those present saw these grateful [Afghans]?
The military commissar immediately closed this topic, something like, - "That's because of such ..." - but the men did not support me either. I don’t know why, maybe they were afraid for benefits ... "

Women ended up in Afghanistan for various reasons. If they served in the army, they went there by appointment, whether they liked it or not. By the beginning of the 1980s, women accounted for 1.5% of Soviet military personnel (222). During the Second World War, women were part of the crews of bombers and fighters, were tank commanders and snipers. Now they served as archivists, ciphers and translators in the headquarters apparatus, worked at the logistics base in Puli Khumri or Kabul, as well as doctors and nurses in hospitals and front-line medical units. Civilian specialists have been appearing in Afghanistan since 1984. They worked at headquarters, in regimental libraries, in military stores and laundries, in Voentorg, and were secretaries. The commander of the 66th separate motorized rifle brigade in Jalalabad managed to find a typist who could also perform the duties of a hairdresser (223) .

The motives of those who came voluntarily varied. Doctors and nurses were sent to work in hospitals and first-aid posts out of a sense of professional duty. Some had to tend to the wounded under fire, like their predecessors during the Second World War, and already in the first days after their arrival in Afghanistan they faced terrible wounds (224) . Some women were driven by personal motives: failures in personal life or money. In Afghanistan they paid double the salary (225) . Others sought adventure: for single women with no connections at the top, civilian service under Soviet forces abroad was one of the few ways they could see the world. Unlike military women, civil servants could always break their contract and be home in a week.

Elena Maltseva wanted to contribute to the assistance her country provides to the Afghan people. She was nineteen, and she studied at the Taganrog Medical Institute. In 1983, she wrote in Komsomolskaya Pravda that her classmates - not only boys, but also girls - want to test themselves, to temper:

And, besides, we all the time felt the need to prepare ourselves for the defense of the Motherland (sorry for the big words, I can’t express it otherwise) and defend it ... Why am I eager to leave now? It may sound silly, but I'm just afraid not to be in time. After all, right now it is difficult there, it goes there undeclared war. And further. I will teach children, educate them. But to be honest, I'm not ready for it yet. You can teach, educate when there is some kind of life experience, life hardening ... It is difficult there, and I want to be there. Are my hands not needed? (Again big words, but can you say otherwise?) I want to help the people of this country, our Soviet people who are there now (226) .

Contract women, like conscripts, had to go through the draft board. Many hoped to get to Germany, but there were few vacancies there, and military registration and enlistment office workers had to fulfill the quota for Afghanistan. Therefore, they persuaded or even forced women to apply there.

Women did not participate in the battles, but they also came under fire from time to time. During the war, forty-eight civilian employees and four female ensigns died: some as a result of enemy actions, others as a result of an accident or from illness (227). On November 29, 1986, three women were killed in an An-12 plane shot down over Kabul airport. Two of them were on their way to their first job in Jalalabad; one was recruited sixteen days earlier, the other less than a week before the disaster (228). A total of 1,350 women have received state awards for their service in Afghanistan (229).

Like the soldiers, the women were first sent to a makeshift camp in Kabul and stayed there until their superiors identified them. further fate. Some enterprising girls did not want to wait and took matters into their own hands. Svetlana Rykova, 20, asked for a plane ride from Kabul to Kandahar, then persuaded a helicopter pilot to take her to Shindand, a major airbase in western Afghanistan. There she was offered a job in the officer's canteen. She refused and decided to wait. Finally, a vacancy for an assistant to the head of the financial service has opened at the base. Rykova worked in Afghanistan from April 1984 to February 1986.

Tatyana Kuzmina, a single mother in her thirties, first worked as a nurse in Jalalabad. Then she managed to beg for a job in the combat agitation and propaganda detachment (BAPO). Tatyana was the only woman in this detachment, which delivered food and medicine to the mountain villages around Jalalabad, conducted propaganda, arranged concerts, and helped the sick and mothers with babies. She was already supposed to finally return to the USSR, but shortly before that she went on a mission with a detachment and drowned in a mountain river. Tatyana's body was found only two weeks later (230).

Lilia, a qualified typist at the headquarters of one of the Soviet military districts, received too little, and in order to live up to her salary, she had to collect and return bottles. She couldn't even buy normal winter clothes. And in the 40th Army she was greeted friendly and well fed. She did not even imagine that such a thing happens (231).

Many of these women in Afghanistan got married, although they may not have originally intended to do so. One said: “Here all the women are lonely, disadvantaged. Try to live on one hundred and twenty rubles a month - my salary, when you want to get dressed, and it's interesting to relax during your vacation. They say, for the suitors, they say, they came? Well, and if for the grooms? Why hide? I am thirty-two years old, I am alone ”(232). Marriages could only be registered by Soviet officials in Kabul. A young couple from the 66th separate motorized rifle brigade in Jalalabad went to the airport and came under grenade attack shortly after leaving the base. Both died. Natalya Glushchak and her fiancé, an officer from the communications company of the same brigade, managed to get to Kabul and register their marriage. They decided not to fly back, but drove in an armored personnel carrier. At the entrance to Jalalabad, an armored personnel carrier was blown up by a remote-controlled mine. They collected only the upper half of Natalya's body (233).

There were many times more men than women, and the attitude towards the latter was complex. Colonel Antonenko, commander of the 860th separate motorized rifle regiment, said: “There were forty-four women in the regiment. Nurses, water treatment plant lab assistants, waitresses, cooks, canteen managers, shop assistants. We didn't have blood supplies. When the regiment returned from combat, if there were wounded, these women sometimes gave them blood. It was real. We had amazing women! Worthy of the best words" (234).

The role of nurses and doctors did not raise questions. One nurse told how the soldiers brought the wounded, but did not leave: “Girls, we don’t need anything. Can I just sit at your place?" Another recalled how a young guy whose friend had been blown to pieces kept telling her about it and was unable to stop (235) . A telephone operator from a Kabul hotel arrived at a mountain outpost, whose employees could not see strangers for months. The commander of the outpost asked: “Girl, take off your cap. I haven't seen the woman for a whole year." All the soldiers poured out of the trenches to gawk at her long hair. “Here, at home,” one nurse recalled, “they have their mothers and sisters. Wives. They don't need us here. There they trusted us with something about themselves that in this life they will not tell anyone ”(236).

One young officer, who was discharged from the Central Infectious Diseases Hospital in Kabul, where he was treated for typhus, cholera and hepatitis, began an affair with a nurse who cared for him. His jealous comrades told him that she was a witch. Like, he paints portraits of his lovers and hangs them on the wall, and three of his predecessors have already died in battle. And now she took up his portrait. Superstitious feelings took possession of him. However, the nurse never finished the drawing, and the officer was injured but did not die. “In the war, we soldiers were terribly superstitious,” he recalled with regret. After Afghanistan, he did not see the nurse again, but he retained fond memories of her (237).

Ultimately, nurses did not receive official recognition. Alexander Khoroshavin, who served in the 860th separate motorized rifle regiment in Fayzabad, twenty years later learned with bitterness that Lyudmila Mikheeva, who worked as a nurse in his regiment from 1983 to 1985, did not receive any benefits due to any veteran (238) .

Women were often pressured by men who were ready to resort to both flattery and threats. Many veterans spoke of them with resentment and contempt, calling them "Chekists" and hinting that they sold themselves for checks, the currency used by Soviet citizens in Afghanistan. Some acknowledged that the nurses and doctors may have gone to Afghanistan with the best of intentions. But few had kind words to the rest - secretaries, librarians, storekeepers or laundresses. They were accused of going to Afghanistan for men and money.

Women were indignant and invented protection. Some found a patron to keep others away from them. Many generals of the Second World War, including Konstantin Rokossovsky and Georgy Zhukov, had PPZh, "field wives." During the Afghan war, this institution was revived. Andrey Dyshev describes him sympathetically in the novel PJP, which tells the story of a nurse, Gulya Karimova, who voluntarily went to Afghanistan, and Captain Gerasimov, her lover (239) .

Military translator Valery Shiryaev believed that this reflected the social reality of Russia itself: many soldiers were from the provinces and viewed women as prey or as an object of beating. But in Afghanistan, at least the party workers behaved reasonably and did not try to interfere in relations between people, as in their homeland. Tension was inevitable: "The smaller the garrison, the fewer women and the greater the competition, sometimes leading to fights, duels, suicides and the desire to die in battle" (240) .

Not all Soviet women in Afghanistan worked for the state. Some met Afghans (especially students) in their homeland, in Russia, and entered into marriage with them. Galina Margoeva married engineer Haji Hussein. She and her husband lived in Kabul, in their apartment in a microdistrict, not far from the airport and next to a housing construction plant. Galina witnessed all the changes in the regime, all the horrors civil war and the atrocities of the Taliban. One woman named Tatyana married an Afghan officer, Nigmatulla, who studied in the USSR. They got married, despite the opposition of her relatives and his superiors. Their first child was born in Minsk. Five years later, Nigmatullah was assigned to Kabul, then to Kandahar, and then to Herat. He served under different regimes: he was a political worker in a division under Najibullah, in a brigade under the Mujahideen, and again in a division during the rule of the Taliban. Tatyana stayed with him. She wore a veil, learned Farsi, but still remained an atheist. When Nigmatulla's three brothers were killed, Tanya adopted nine orphans into her family and raised them with her own children (241) .

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British women serve in one of the most dangerous parts of Helmand province.
They know the Pashtun language, establish contact and communicate with Afghan women.
But even in such harsh conditions, a woman always remains a woman.
There are a lot of cosmetics in the barracks, underwear with lace is hung outside, the shower takes a long time.
Going to the desert, be sure to take a cream to protect against the scorching sun, so as not to burn.

1. Patrolling: Lieutenant Jessica French visits a community in Helmand province. Her job is to win the trust and support of Afghan women. (AllisonBaskerville)

2. Lieutenant French communicates with local residents. She believes that education is the key to a brighter future for Afghan women. (Allison Baskerville)

3. The shower is one of the few things that men and women do separately here. (AllisonBaskerville)

4. Lieutenant French cleans the service pistol "Zig Sauer". (Allison Baskerville)

5. Evening at the TV, almost like at home. (AllisonBaskerville)

6. Washing. As you can see in the photo, not all NATO fighters refuse to fight without washing machines and ice cream…(AllisonBaskerville)

7 Essentials: Cosmetics and personal care products take pride of place on the makeshift dressing table. (AllisonBaskerville)

8. Comments are unnecessary. (Allison Baskerville)

9. In this case free time used most rationally: for sleep. (Allison Baskerville)

10. Captain Crossley, a medic from the hospital of University College London, against the backdrop of a military camp and mountains. (Allison Baskerville)

11. Win hearts and minds: With the help of her knowledge of the language, Anna was able to get into the village and interest the residents. (AllisonBaskerville)

12. Photos of Allison Baskerville help to get an idea not only about the service of the British in Afghanistan, but also about how local communities survive. (Allison Baskerville)

13. Captain Crossley on patrol in the Gereshk Valley in Helmand. The party stops to see if they can enter the village. (AllisonBaskerville)

14. Gathering: two women prepare to go on patrol, during which they must visit several villages and teach the locals the basics of veterinary practice. Most often, goat care is entrusted to children. (Allison Baskerville)

15 Lance Corporal Rachel Clayton braids her hair to keep her hair less dusty and easier to wear a helmet. (AllisonBaskerville)

16. Captain Crosslim joins the men from the 3rd Infantry Regiment, preparing to patrol. (Allison Baskerville)

17. Captain Crossley (pictured) says that he often sees admiration on the faces of Afghan women when he comes to the village and takes off his helmet and glasses and speaks to them in their native language. (Allison Baskerville)