Review of Vinogradova, L. (2015). Defending the Motherland. Women fighter pilots of the Great Patriotic War. Moscow: Kolibri, Azbuka-Attikus. 448 pages.

Abstract

The review considers the opinions of L. Vinogradova, who wrote a book about Soviet women pilots during World War II, based on the recently discovered documentary evidence and witness reports, as well as taking into account the relevant experience of her predecessors. At the centre of the book is a life story of the war hero L. Litvyak, who shared a similar lot with her sisters in arms. Following the descriptions in war correspondent V. Grossman’s Stalingrad Notebooks [Stalingradskie tetradi], the author details aerial battles in the skies above Stalingrad. In her reconstruction of the ferocious engagements, Vinogradova also covers the boisterous propaganda of pre-war years and questionable episodes in Russian war history. The book seeks to disprove the American historian B. Yenne, who, in his biography called The White Rose of Stalingrad, showed L. Litvyak as yesterday’s schoolgirl, killed when not yet 22.