Women Under Suspicion

For two years during World War II, Nazi forces occupied large swaths of the western Soviet Union. In response to devastating losses on a contested front, Stalin first permitted and then encouraged women to join the Red Army and the resistance. Simultaneously, female civilians in occupied territory found themselves in an untenable position: they could resist the occupiers and face the possibly fatal consequences or engage in sexual barter, with all the risk, shame, and disapprobation that entailed. In Women Under Suspicion, Regina Kazyulina probes these “choiceless choices” with sensitivity and nuance. 

Officially, women in the Soviet Union enjoyed a degree of equality unknown elsewhere in Allied countries at the time. However, long-standing norms of gendered behavior and stereotypes that cast women as morally weak, politically fallible, and sexually tempting meant that women in the army or living behind enemy lines were viewed with skepticism, seen as weak points easily exploited by the enemy. Concerned about sabotage, espionage, and ideological corruption, authorities categorized women who fraternized with the enemy—or who were suspected of doing so—as “socially dangerous,” a uniquely Soviet legal designation that exposed the accused to prosecution, imprisonment, and exile. Even without official oversight, women rumored to be involved with German occupiers were reviled, and treated accordingly, by their neighbors. By reading official reports against the grain and incorporating rare personal documents, Kazyulina provides a multifaceted study of the realities for non-Jewish Soviet women—in the army or resistance, or at home in occupied territories—during and after Nazi occupation.