Today I made a surprising discovery, an internationally famous hero from World War II lived in the same suburb as I do.
Maria and I walked the dog and came across the Alley of Heroes, a new memorial project under construction here in Mytishchi, just North of Moscow. The names and faces of heroes stretch across almost one whole side of the park. It’s remarkable that one town of under 300,000 people (and much less than that in 1941) could produce so many heroes, but it was that kind of war.
Much to my surprise, though in hindsight I shouldn’t have been surprised, there was a person in that lineup who I recognized.
Senior Lieutenant Yevgeniya Maximovna Rudneva, regimental navigator for the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment.
Yevgeniya was born December 24, 1920 in Berdyansk, Zaporozhye region, close to the Azov Sea in Ukraine Russia. Her family moved to Mytishchi, where she went on to attend Moscow State University. After the war began she volunteered. At 22 years old, Killed over Crimea on the night of April 9, 1944. Posthumously awarded Hero of the Soviet Union October 26 that same year. There’s an asteroid named after her, the 1907 Rudneva.
Yes, Yevgeniya looks very serious in these first two photos, but she did smile sometimes (smiling was not illegal in the Soviet Union):
Yevgeniya with a cat. Russians like cats (who doesn’t?)
Yevgeniya (right) with Nataliya Meklin (who I’ve written about before).
Yevgeniya with Yevdokiya Nikulina.
Sitting: Olga Klyueva, Serafima Amosova, Dina (Yevdokiya) Nikyulina, Genya (Yevgeniya) Rudneva.
Standing: Nina Kolbasina, Irina Rakobolskaya, Anna Yelenina, Mariya Smirnova.
Yevgeniya Rudneva, Irina Rakobolskaya, Irina Sebrova, Yevdokiya Bershanksaya, Natasha (Nataliya) Meklin. 1943.
A neutral observer might find the case of Yevgeniya Rudneva curious because she’s not associated with any particular battlefield accomplishment. She didn’t personally turn the tide of a losing fight, destroy a great number of enemies, or anything like that. Yevgeniya is famous only because her military comrades, schoolmates, and friends put an extraordinary amount of effort into immortalizing her specifically, She’s the central martyr figure in every story they told and wrote about after the war. So why all the fame? I think it is because Yevgeniya was an unusually bright and pleasant person who everyone could tell was going to go on to do something very special in her life. Then the war killed her, the war she volunteered for.
After the war, her executive officer and friend Irina Rakobolskaya published Yevgeniya’s diary under the title Пока Стучит Сердце, As Long as the Heart Beats, which is a reference to the Jules Verne quote:
As long as the heart beats, as long as body and soul keep together, I cannot admit that any creature endowed with a will has need to despair of life.
Ian Kummer
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It’s amazing how you know more about these girls than I do). It’s a nice post. Thank you.
I just read a couple of their books. They do a good job of explaining things 🙂
So she was a Night Witch? Every single one of those women was a heroine.
Pedantic
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