The Sniper Movement

In one field above all were women specifically trained and ordained by the Soviet warring state to kill: sniping. Trained assassins, required to stalk a human quarry with the deliberate intent of killing in cold blood, the woman sniper seemed the antithesis of Soviet or any other womanhood.2 For the Red Army, the sniper, male or female, was by necessity a ‘terrible avenger, who hates the enemy with all their being’.3 For the Wehrmacht, the Red Army woman sniper was undoubtedly the ultimate manifestation of the ‘ferocious’ Soviet ‘riflewomen’ (Flintenweiber): ‘Bolshevik beasts’ and ‘Amazons devoid of femininity’.4 Indeed, for women snipers themselves, the act of killing was a profoundly disturbing one, at least initially. In good part, of course, the seemingly inherent ‘contradiction’ of the term ‘woman-soldier’, that is, between self and state perception of women as natural nurturers and killing, was resolved and justified by the need to eliminate an inhuman, fascist enemy that flouted the rules of warfare.5