Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko (1916–1974) was a Soviet sniper with 309 confirmed kills – the most successful woman sniper in history and one of the most successful snipers of any army. A history student when the war began, she fought at Odessa and Sevastopol, and in 1942 travelled to the United States, Canada and Britain, where she was received at the White House.
A student and a marksman
Lyudmila Belova was born on 12 July 1916 in Bila Tserkva, near Kyiv. As a teenager in Kyiv she worked as a grinder at the Arsenal factory and in her spare time joined an OSOAVIAKhIM shooting club, where she earned the Voroshilov Sharpshooter badge and a marksman certificate. In 1937 she enrolled at Kyiv University to study history, planning to become a scholar and teacher, and she also completed a six-month sniper course.
In June 1941 she was in her fourth year at the university. She went to the recruiting office among the first volunteers and asked to join the infantry. She was accepted as a sniper and sent to the 25th “Chapayev” Rifle Division.
Odessa, 1941
Her division fought in the defence of Odessa, which held out against German and Romanian forces from August to October 1941. In about two and a half months of fighting there she is credited with 187 enemy soldiers. When the city was evacuated in mid-October, her unit was taken by sea to Sevastopol in the Crimea.
Sevastopol, 1941–1942
At Sevastopol Pavlichenko fought through the long siege of the naval base. Snipers there worked in the hills and woods around the city, often staying in position for hours or days. In May 1942 Lieutenant Pavlichenko was cited by the command of the Southern Army for killing 257 enemy soldiers; her final tally of 309 included 36 enemy snipers. During the siege she married a fellow sniper, Alexei Kitsenko, who was mortally wounded by a mortar shell soon after. In June 1942 she herself was hit in the face by mortar shell fragments and was evacuated from Sevastopol shortly before the city fell.
Across America and Britain
After her recovery Pavlichenko was sent abroad with a Soviet delegation in 1942. She toured the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, speaking about the war on the Eastern Front. President Franklin D. Roosevelt welcomed her to the White House, and Eleanor Roosevelt invited her to travel across the country with her. In her speeches she urged the Allies to open a second front in Europe. In Chicago she told a large crowd: “I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist invaders by now.” The press called her “Lady Death”. The American singer Woody Guthrie wrote a song about her, “Miss Pavlichenko”.
Instructor and Hero
Back home, now an officer, Pavlichenko did not return to the front line; she trained snipers until the end of the war. On 25 October 1943 she was made a Hero of the Soviet Union and received the Gold Star medal. After the war she completed her history degree at Kyiv University, worked as a researcher for the Soviet Navy and was active in the Soviet Committee of War Veterans. She died in Moscow on 10 October 1974 and is buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.
More: Roza Shanina · Vasily Zaitsev · all heroes of the war
Sources and further reading
- Lyudmila Pavlichenko – Wikipedia
- Павличенко, Людмила Михайловна – Wikipedia (Russian)
- Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Lady Death: The Memoirs of Stalin’s Sniper (English edition 2018).