Lyudmila Pavlichenko joined the army when women weren't accepted, but that didn't stop her from recording over 300 confirmed kills.
Library of CongressLyudmila Pavlichenko, otherwise known as “Lady Death.”
For most snipers, receiving threats from the enemy wouldn’t be something you looked forward to. For Lyudmila Pavlichenko, however, it was something that delighted her. When the Germans threatened to tear her into 309 pieces, the exact number of Nazis she had killed thus far, she reveled in it.
“They even knew my score!” she exclaimed.
Delight in her enemies’ failures was how Lyudmila Pavlichenko lived her life. As a sniper for the Soviet Red Army, she killed 309 German soldiers, including several snipers. At just 24 years old, she had joined a group of 2,000 female snipers in the Red Army, only 500 of whom would survive World War II.
Now, Pavlichenko is considered the greatest sniper of all time, sharing the leaderboard with Chuck Mawhinney, Adelbert Waldron, and even Simo Häyhä, Finland’s “White Death.”
The Early Life Of Lyudmila Pavlichenko
Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko (née Belova) was born on July 12, 1916 in Bila Tserkva in the Russian Empire. Her father, Mikhail Belov, was a Communist Party member who served in the Red Army.
As a child, Pavlichenko competed in several sports and described herself as a tomboy. When she was 14, her family moved to Kiev, and she quickly joined a paramilitary shooting club and gained experience as a sharpshooter.
All her life she had been outspoken about the role of women and was constantly trying to one-up her male counterparts. Her competitive spirit was how she ended up training as a sniper.
“When a neighbor’s boy boasted of his exploits at a shooting range,” she wrote in her autobiography titled Lady Death: The Memoirs of Stalin’s Sniper. “I set out to show that a girl could do as well. So I practiced a lot.”
In 1932, she married Alexei Pavlichenko and gave birth to their son, Rostislav, the same year. However, the relationship was not successful, and Pavlichenko returned home to her parents and had the marriage dissolved.
In the mid-to-late 1930s, Pavlichenko secured employment as a factory worker while preparing to be a history teacher at Kiev University. Never missing an opportunity to participate in sports, Pavlichenko joined the university’s track team as a sprinter and pole vaulter.
When Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the USSR, in June 1941, Pavlichenko jumped at the opportunity to serve her country.
Shunning the concept of serving as a nurse in World War II, she opted instead for active duty and combat.
“I joined the army when women were not yet accepted,” she recalled later on a press tour of the Allied countries. The lack of women in the army didn’t scare Pavlichenko. In fact, it made her try that much harder.
Before long, she was in sniper school. After proving that she had the skills, she then faced another challenge in convincing the army to take her.
“They wouldn’t take girls in the army, so I had to resort to all kinds of tricks to get in,” Lyudmila Pavlichenko said. At one point, her Red Army officials simply pushed her into the field and had her perform an impromptu audition. The goal was simply to take out a pair of Romanians who were known to be working with the Germans.
Public Domain Portrait of Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko in her military uniform.
“When I picked off the two, I was accepted,” she said, noting that the two men did not make it into her tally, as they were “test shots.”
After demonstrating her considerable skill in such a short time, the Red Army immediately enlisted her. From then on, Pavlichenko threw herself into battle, proving herself to be an excellent and gifted sniper. On her very first day on active duty, she took out two German scouts casing the area from a distance of 1312 feet.
Becoming The Deadliest Female Sniper In History
Public DomainPavlichenko in a trench in 1942.
Over the next few months, Lyudmila Pavlichenko remained as steady and true as ever, fighting in two major battles. During a battle in Odessa, she recorded 187 confirmed kills. Then during the battle of Sevastopol, she brought the number to 257.
In addition to standard sniping, Pavlichenko also took on riskier assignments, including the most dangerous of all: counter-sniping. When counter-sniping, soldiers essentially engage in a duel, shooting back and forth at each other until one of them succeeds in taking the other out.
In her entire career, Pavlichenko never lost a duel, despite engaging in duels that lasted several days and nights. Once, a duel lasted three days, though Pavlichenko didn’t budge.
“That was one of the tensest experiences of my life,” she recalled.
When she hit 100, she was promoted to Senior Seargent, and eventually Lieutenant. By the end of World War II, she had killed 309 enemy soldiers, 36 of them her counter-snipers. Throughout her time as a sniper, she was wounded several times, but it was the fourth and final one that took her out of battle. After taking shrapnel to the face, she was removed from active duty and assigned to train incoming snipers.
Her second husband, fellow sniper Alexei Kitsenko, suffered a similar injury when shortly after they were married, although he was less lucky and died from his injuries a few days later.
On top of her wound, her superiors had begun to fear that the Germans were taking an interest in her. When she was pulled, the Germans knew who she was and were attempting to bribe her into service for them.
“Lyudmila Pavlichenko, come over to us,” they would blast over their loudspeakers. “We will give you plenty of chocolate and make you a German officer.”
Pavlichenko, of course, refused their offers.
After recovering from her injuries, Pavlichenko did not return to the front lines and instead served as a sniper instructor and the subject of several propaganda campaigns. During this time, she earned the nickname “the Russian bitch from hell” among the Axis powers and “Lady Death” among the Allies.
Pavlichenko Goes On An Allied Tour
Library of CongressJustice Robert Jackson, Lyudmila Pavlichenko, and Eleanor Roosevelt during Pavlichenko’s press tour of the United States.
In 1942, Lyudmila Pavlichenko attended a tour of the Allied countries. When she arrived in Washington D.C., she became the first Soviet citizen to be welcomed at the White House. While there, she struck up a friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
The two bonded over their shared view on women’s rights and Mrs. Roosevelt even accompanied her on her tour around America. She helped encourage Pavlichenko, teaching her to brush aside questions about her looks and focus on her work. The two would maintain a close friendship over the years, and when Mrs. Roosevelt was touring Moscow 15 years later, the two would reunite.
In a later interview, Mrs. Roosevelt would later say this of the female sniper:
“There is something very charming to me about the young Russian woman, Junior Lieutenant Lyudmila Pavlichenko. She has suffered…and is suffering something which is universal and binds all the world together regardless of language.”
During the press tour, Pavlichenko was faced with a barrage of inappropriate questions that left her stunned. She told TIME in 1942:
“I am amazed at the kind of questions put to me by the women press correspondents in Washington. Don’t they know there is a war? They asked me silly questions such as do I use powder and rouge and nail polish, and do I curl my hair? One reporter even criticized the length of the skirt of my uniform, saying that in America women wear shorter skirts and besides my uniform made me look fat.”
During one particularly contentious speaking event in Chicago, Pavlichenko drilled into the largely-male crowd:
“Gentlemen, I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist invaders by now. Don’t you think gentleman, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?”
She would tour Canada and England before returning home to the USSR. Upon her return, she became the first and only woman to receive the Hero of the Soviet Union award, the highest military award in the USSR.
Soviet Television / YouTubePavlichenko in her later years.
After the war, Lyudmila Pavlichenko went on to finish her degree at Kiev University, earning a Masters in history. From 1945 to 1953, she served as a research assistant at the Soviet Navy headquarters and was active on the Soviet Committee of the Veterans of War.
Pavlichenko continued working until she suffered a stroke and passed away at the age of 58 on October 10, 1974. She is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow alongside her son, Rostislav.
Public Domain A Soviet Union-issued postage stamp dedicated to Pavlichenko.
Today, she is immortalized in history as the world’s most successful female sniper and one of the best snipers of all time.
After reading about Lyudmila Pavlichenko, check out Simo Hayha, the deadliest sniper in history. Then, take a look at Ravensbruck, the only all-female concentration camp.
