The Vitebsk Regional Museum of Minay Shmyrev is launching a new project "Woman and War".

The Vitebsk Regional Museum of M.F. Shmeryov will present the new project "Women and War," dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Belarus from the Nazi invaders and the Great Victory.

The Red Army was the first European army of the 20th century to have separate female combat units on a regular basis.

"About a million women fought in the Soviet army. They mastered all military specialties, including the most "male" ones. There was even a language problem: the words "tanker," "infantryman," "submachine gunner" did not have a feminine form until then, because women had never done this job before. "Feminine" words were born there, at the war..." writes Svetlana Alexievich in her book "The Unwomanly Face of War."

The theme, first voiced in this perspective in 1985 (the year the book was published), has not lost its significance today. As Irina Shishkova, director of the Hero of the Soviet Union M.F. Shmeryov Regional Museum, noted, this theme is also relevant for the Vitebsk region. By the beginning of 1944, only 15,000 people remained in the regional center. In February 1944, the Nazis conducted a raid and captured 12,000 civilians, exclusively women, the elderly, and children, who were driven into camps. The city was completely depopulated...

Women replaced the men who went to the front in production and constituted the overwhelming majority of the medical staff in military hospitals. They tried to survive in occupied territories, ghettos, and concentration camps; they were taken for forced labor in Germany. Many women fought against the enemy in partisan detachments. For example, as of August 1, 1944, there were about 374,000 people in the ranks of Belarusian partisans, including 282,500 combat personnel. Of these, 45,200 were women. In addition, 24,000 intelligence agents and 19,000 liaisons operated in Belarus, 65 percent of whom were women.

The female medical staff played a huge role in the war. It was women, fragile and weak, who carried wounded men from the battlefield on their shoulders. The war made many physically and morally resilient.

Participating in combat operations, they died on par with men and also displayed courage and bravery. Nine Belarusian women were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, three of whom performed their feats on the territory of Vitebsk region — Vera Kholuzhaya, Zinaida Portnova, Efrosinya Zenkova.

The post-war period was no easier: in addition to domestic and food problems, and child-rearing issues, the main task was the revival of the country's national economic complex. Women's labor was widely used in all spheres of the economy and agriculture, and the main reason was that many men — fathers, sons, brothers — did not return from the war.

The museum's archive stores unique documents about Vitebsk women whose youth fell during the wartime ordeal and the difficult post-war period: Hero of Socialist Labor Maria Matsenko, underground group leader Vera Kulagina, underground fighter Nadezhda Samuylova (her correspondence with her husband, who went to the front in June 1941, and they had just gotten married the previous month, in May, has been preserved).

These and other documents will form the basis of a series of exhibitions within the project — "Woman in the Rear," "Woman-Underground Fighter," "Family Album." A series of meetings with participants of the Great Patriotic War and their family members is also planned: witnesses of terrible events will tell how they managed to survive and not break down in these inhuman conditions. A scientific and practical conference "Woman as a Participant in Military Events" will also be held.

"Woman and War" is a long-term project, the events of which will take place this and next year.

Irina Azevich, "Vitbichi"