A woman creates the world

A woman of any nationality or ethnicity deserves deep respect, if for no other reason than the fact that she brings about the most important event on our sinful earth—she gives birth to a human being. She creates the future. For this alone, we men must carry women in our arms, appreciate them and protect them. I am not even mentioning all that a woman does. She feeds us from the very moment we come into this world and continues to care for us until the end of her days. She does not sleep at night and guards our sleep, our health, and our peace. She creates warmth and beauty in the home. A woman makes us knights, men. It is for women that we strive to become better, braver and more noble. We could speak at length about what a woman means for humanity, but there is simply not enough time. And this applies to all women of any nationality and any country.

From Baku to Tiksi

But now I want to speak about the Russian woman, and there is no nationalism or chauvinism in this. Because, first of all, I am an Ossetian and do not believe my mother was any worse than women of other nationalities. My wife is Georgian. I can only say that the life of both an Ossetian and a Georgian woman is neither easy nor simple. My wife went through fire, water and the copper pipes with me. I will stop at just one example from her life. In 1966, I was transferred from Baku to **Tiksi **for service. Tiksi is on the southern shore of the Arctic Ocean. We had three children, the youngest just three months old. She gathered them up and, without informing me, flew to Tiksi. Meanwhile, I was setting up my unit on combat duty—not in Thailand, but on Kotelny Island, somewhere near the 75th parallel, in the center of the Arctic Ocean. To be honest, not every Frenchwoman would have made such a decision. But by then, she had already become a Russian woman because she was married to an Ossetian but a Russian officer.

Russian Woman

I want to speak about the Russian woman because the fate of the Russian woman is the fate of the Russian people. The Russian people played a decisive role in the destinies of those nations historically connected with them. Many beautiful things have been written about the Russian woman. Personally, it was through reading Russian literature that I formed my impression of the Russian woman. It was Turgenev, Tolstoy, Goncharov, Leskov, and of course, Gorky, among others, who created the most beautiful image of the Russian woman in my mind.

Service in Kurdamir Azerbaijan

The thing is, I lived in Tbilisi until I was 20, and I rarely came into contact with Russians. But when I was a cadet at the Odessa Anti-Aircraft Artillery School, on leave from Tbilisi, I “stole” my wife (and to be fair, she was eager for me to do so) and brought her to Odessa, with no money, no apartment, nothing. It was then that we felt the real, genuine support from Russian women. My wife was going through a tough time. As a second-year cadet, I earned 7 rubles and 50 kopecks. We had to pay 10 rubles for coal, which we got from a friend. My wife didn’t know Russian, had no profession, and we had to survive. Russian women helped her get a job at a sewing factory, became her friends, and supported her. I finished school and was sent to the Baku Anti-Aircraft Defense District—a cursed district, to be honest. We lost our son there. In Kurdamir, the heat in summer reached 50°C in the shade. There were mosquitoes, flies, and snakes in our Finnish houses. I don’t know any English or German woman who would have endured such wild conditions, but the Russian woman stood by her husband, helping him endure these inhuman conditions while maintaining the combat readiness of the units. And again, Russian women helped my wife. In many ways, we were able to survive thanks to the officers’ wives, and they were mostly Russian. They even organized amateur performances, which somehow made our lives more interesting and helped us survive. So, our life together, my wife and I, was intertwined with Russian women in military towns and garrisons, where we interacted as wives of officers. And being an officer’s wife, my friends, is not for the faint of heart. Russian women followed their husbands to the ends of the earth—remember the wives of the Decembrists. When I saw how the wives of officers lived in Tiksi, I thought that, perhaps, the wives of the Decembrists had it a little easier.

Harsh arctic days

I arrived in Tiksi in July 1966. I saw from the airplane window the Laptev Sea, with huge chunks of ice floating. The air temperature was close to zero. I introduced myself to the authorities. They gave me a small room of 8 square meters, for two people. It was a barrack, with a corridor in the middle. The barrack was wooden. On both sides of the corridor, there were small rooms of 8 square meters each. Naturally, there were no facilities, neither in winter (-40°C, wind speeds of 40 meters per second, polar night), nor in summer. I will not even describe the conditions. The general kitchen had 20 stoves, and 20 women stood shoulder to shoulder around them, cooking meals for the brave defenders of the country’s air borders. And all this while American bombers with nuclear payloads were flying overhead! The water was brought in, and by “brought in,” I mean that a truck brought chunks of ice cut from a freshwater lake. The women put these pieces in barrels and that was our water. Tell me, what kind of woman would agree to live in these hellish conditions? And I haven’t even mentioned the polar night from November to April, the blizzards, the fact that summer lasted only two months, with temperatures between -2°C and +2°C—the rest of the time was winter! Tiksi was still a tropical paradise compared to what I saw on the islands of Kegelyakh and Kotelny. These islands are part of the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. I had to stay on these islands for months at a time. We had radio-technical units there, with about 7 or 8 officers and around 50 soldiers. The island was surrounded by the Arctic Ocean. There were soldiers’ barracks, officers’ barracks, and combat equipment. In winter, you couldn’t go outside and return due to the blizzards and polar night. In summer, the mud stuck to your shoes, and walking was extremely difficult. I won’t even mention the facilities. The officers’ wives walked in the dimly lit corridor, both in winter and summer, with children in tow. I had to eat “delicacies” like dried potatoes, dried onions, dried carrots, and the like. No radio, no television, nothing. What would have become of an officer if his loving, tender, and caring wife had not been by his side? One can only imagine. But they were there. They could have chosen not to be there. No one would have blamed them for not going. But they were there. This is the Russian woman.

Taiga

I met Russian women in Krasnoyarsk when I was transferred from the Polar Regions to the position of head of the political department of a regiment. The regiment had 9 battalions, and the battalions were in the deep Taiga. The officers’ houses were wooden. The temperature reached -55°C. The water was brought in. The nearest schools and shops were 40–50 km away. There was no work for the officers’ wives. I went to the battalion, gathered the women, and asked what their problems were. One officer’s wife said she was a doctor, but there was no work for her in the battalion. Another one said she was a teacher, but there was no work for her either. And so it was in every battalion. They could have gone to the city, to their fathers or mothers, and found work, but no—they stayed in the Taiga, next to their husbands, supporting them with their presence so that their husbands could keep the skies clear over our Motherland. How can one not admire the Russian woman?

My daughter is also a Soviet woman

And I don’t have to look far. My own daughter spent almost 4 years on the Kuril Islands, on Shikotan and Utorup, islands that the Japanese want to take, living with her husband, an Air Defense officer. The small children were with us and her husband’s parents. My daughter followed the example of her Russified mother. Time passed, and I was transferred to Klin, to the Anti-Missile Defense. In 1973, I was moved to Naro-Fominsk as the head of the political department of a separate missile defense center, and the conditions there were very different. The living conditions for an Air Defense officer at the time were simply wonderful—closed city, a cultural center, a school, a kindergarten, stores of all kinds, post office—everything one needs for a normal life. But here, other difficulties arose. The town was 20 km from the district center, and there were about 2,000 women, officers’ wives, and warrant officers, but the work in the military town was not sufficient for all the women, which created some tension. Of course, this was felt, and we had to do something about it. In the unit, there were several women’s councils. We got together and decided to organize an amateur performance, and since we had a music school with music teachers, we were able to organize a great amateur performance. I will say without boasting that we always took prize places at competitions. And this amateur performance eased the tension to some extent. People were busy with something. Even now, I have in front of my eyes my wonderful, beautiful, graceful, and full of inner nobility and self-respect Russian women.

Soviet women have not disappeared anywhere

In conclusion, I would like to say that it is a mistake for men to claim Victory Day as their own. German General Guderian writes in his memoirs that if the Russians had not had Russian women, they would not have won. Although he was a fascist, I agree with him in this case. Unfortunately, what I noticed is that the Russian woman often does not receive the attention she deserves. A woman can forgive everything, but she will never forgive a lack of attention. Therefore, dear men, we must be attentive to women not only on March 8th but always. They deserve it.

Soviet Colonel. Shamil Chigoev