Cluster One

Thus far my quest for secondary sources on the so called "Night Witches" has yielded some results, with a downside being that many of them are books written my those within the realm of academia. At this point, I have been unable to find available copies. The articles, military reports, and excerpts of books that I have been able to attain reveal the following picture:

The scholarly conversation surrounding the Soviet Night Witches seems to have an overarching umbrella of women's roles and a amazement of how a perceived ultra-patriarchal society could have allowed for the integration of women into the Russian military while simultaneously citing the Night Witches as a testament of women capability. Historian John Erickson in a short article titled "Night Witches, Snipers, and Laundresses" is at the forefront of giving a historical context for the missions and need for women in the Russian military during WWII. Similarly, Atlantic staff writer Megan Garber gives a brief history of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment in order to provide context and ethos to her American audience in order to convey the celebration of life of female pilot and Night Witch  Nadezhda "Nadia" Popova as she passed on at the age of ninety-one. Unlike the Erickson and Garber who broadly gave historical context, an American Air Force report gave specific details in one chapter titled "The Soviet Women Fliers of World War II" by breaking down the three celebrated all-female fighter units in operation during WWII, their respective missions, and providing some of the better known pilots of each unit. Mahdi Darius Nazeroaya, a geopolitical analyst, provides a sociological lens in his article as he studies Communist ideology, policies of the Soviet government, and significant events of the time to account for the emergence of women in the Russian military, these women referred to sometimes respectfully and other times critically as the "Soviet Amazons." 




"Night Witches, Snipers, and Laundresses" is a 1990 article written by John Erickson, a former director of the Centre for Defense Studies at the University of Edinburgh, that focused on the role Soviet women played during the war effort of World War II. The thesis of the work is that of 

"an evaluation of heroism in all its forms, the dramatic, the self-sacrificing, the compassionate, and so very far from being the least, the plain, dogged, dutiful humdrum- embracing the washerwoman and machine gunner alike" (p. 7). 

The types of evidence employed here were statistical figures, historical images of women in all the aspects of the Red Army, and a few key historical figures. I would argue that the purpose of this particular article was to inform the readers of History Today, the role and war participation that women in the Soviet Union played not only on the home front but in the actual war front.  In relation to my own research paper, the content of the actual Night Witches was minimal but did it give me a few specific women who were pilots to look further into. 


A 2009 Air Force Research Institute Paper titled "Femme Fatale: An Examination of the Role of Women in Combat and the Policy of Implications for Future American Military Operations " or also known as Drew Paper No.5 has a particular chapter titled "The Soviet Women Fliers of World War II" which has a detailed history of the three all-women regiments  that flew for the Soviet Union. The evidence used are statistical data, accounts of different women pilots from all three regiments with a few quotations, as well as a brief historical analysis of how and why the Soviet Union would have enlisted all-women regiments. The purpose of the text, as gathered from the title of the report it is found in is to examine the phenomenon of Soviet women actively participating in combat zones and the training given to them in order to possibly adapt some method for American policy and military operations. After reading the whole chapter, I find that I will definitely be using abundant date from this Air Force gathered report.  

Author and geopolitical analyst Mahdi Darius Nazeroaya 's article "The Historic Role that Soviet Women Played in Defeating the Nazis in World War II" is a sociological overview of Soviet women, especially those who actively participated in either the western or eastern fronts. The thesis can be found in the abstract:

This text, however, goes beyond such a rebuttal by endeavoring to explain the logos behind the mobilization and creation of Soviet woman combatants by examining the roles of societal events, governmental policies, and ideology.

The types of evidence used is the citing of multiple others authors and bodies of text with argumentative rationale; there is also a definite history book quality in the organization of the information. Not all of the article's information is relevant to my research paper, but it does succinctly give background on events that lead to the assimilation of women into military ranks. 

Megan Garber is a staff writer of the American magazine The Atlantic, a literary and culture commentary magazine. In 2013, Garber wrote an article titled "Night Witches: The Female Fighter Pilots of World War II" in which she specifically related information to her American public about the 588th Night Bomber Regiment. The coverage of these Soviet women fighter pilots was a response to Nadezhda Popova's death, one of the many Night Witches/ WWII veterans. The information in this article was broad but had some interesting facts on Popova, the Night Witch in which the article centered around which could possibly lend itself useful to my research paper.