Olivia Kroth: Lessons of Russian History – Remembering heroic Soviet tank driver Marya Oktyabrskaya, 80 years after her death

Lessons of Russian History: Remembering heroic Soviet tank driver Marya Oktyabrskaya, 80 years after her death

by Olivia Kroth

ln 1941, when the Nazi Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union, young people from all of the Soviet Republics took up arms, trained as fighters and participated in the Great Patriotic War to defeat the enemy and save the Motherland. One of those young people was the famous female tank driver Marya Oktyabrskaya, Sergeant and Hero of the Soviet Union. Marya Vasilyevna Oktyabrskaya (Мария Васильевна Октябрьская, 1902 – 1944) served at the Western Front as tank driver in the 2nd battalion of the 26th Guards Tank Brigade of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps. She was born in the village of Kiyat, district of Crimea, in a peasant family, on the 3rd of August 1902. On the 15th of March 1944, at the age of 41, Marya Oktyabrskaya died from her battle wounds in a front-line hospital in Smolensk. Today, on the 15th of March 2024, it is time to remember the heroic Soviet tank driver Marya Oktyabrskaya, 80 years after her death.

Marya spent her childhood and teenage years in Sevastopol. In 1921, she moved first to Dzhankoy, then to Simferopol. Here she worked at a cannery and as a telephone operator at the city telephone exchange.

In 1925, she married a cadet of the Crimean Cavalry School, the couple took the surname Oktyabrsky. Due to changes in her husband’s places of duty, she often moved to different localities. Marya conducted active social work, was elected to women’s councils, completed courses in medical assistance and and mastered machine gun shooting.

In the summer of 1940, Bessarabia joined the USSR. Marya moved to Chisinau together with her husband, a Commissar of the 134th Howitzer Artillery Regiment, which was stationed there.

On the day after the war began, on the 23rd of June 1941, Marya Oktyabrskaya was evacuated to Tomsk, together with her sister and other members of the families of Red Army commanders. In Tomsk she worked as a telephone operator in the anti-aircraft artillery school, which had been evacuated from Leningrad.

At the end of summer 1941, she received the news of her husband’s death. It was reported that “Commissar Ilya Fedotovich Oktyabrsky died a heroic death, on the 9th of August 1941, in one of the battles in Ukraine. Commissar of the 206th Infantry Division I.F. Oktyabrsky was hit by a machine gun burst, while leading his soldiers into the attack in one of the battles near Kiev.»

Having learned about her husband’s death, Marya turned to the military registration and enlistment office with a request to send her to the front. She was refused several times, due to an illness she had suffered – tuberculosis of the cervical vertebra – and due to her already advanced age, 39 years.

Marya sold all of her possessions to buy a tank. She requested the tank, a T-34 medium tank, to be named «Battle Girlfriend» («Боевая подруга») and that she be allowed to drive it. The State Defense Committee agreed to this.

On the 3rd of May 1943, she began to learn how to drive her tank at the Omsk Tank School and became the first female tank driver in the Soviet Union. From October 1943, she already fought on the Western Front in her tank.

On the 18th of November 1943, during battles near the village of Novoe Selo, Dubrovensky district, Vitebsk region, Marya’s tank “Battle girlfriend” broke into the enemy’s defence ranks, destroying a cannon and killing about 50 German soldiers and officers.

When her tank was hit, Marya Oktyabrskaya spent another two days in the damaged tank under enemy fire, repelling enemy attacks until her tank was evacuated, only then she went to the medical platoon.

As commander of the tank battalion, she was a role model :
“Fight the way the tank crews of the Battle Girlfriend fight! Just today, the crew of this glorious vehicle destroyed a platoon of Nazi bandits.”

On the 18th of January 1944, in a battle near the Krynki station in the Vitebsk region, Marya Oktyabrskaya crushed three machine-gun points as well as 20 enemy soldiers and officers with her tank.

The left sloth of the Battle Girlfriend tank was destroyed by a shell. Marya Oktyabrskaya began to repair the damage under enemy fire but a fragment of a mine that exploded nearby severely wounded her in the eye.

On the 28th of January 1944, Marya Oktyabrskaya was presented with the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree.

Some fellow soldiers wrote her a letter:
Hello, our mother Marya Vasilyevna!
We wish you a speedy recovery. We deeply believe that our Battle Girlfriend will reach Berlin. For your injury, we will mercilessly take revenge on the enemy. In an hour, we will leave for the battle. Hugs to you.

She underwent surgery in the field hospital No. 478, then she was taken by plane to a front-line hospital in Smolensk. However, her state of health deteriorated, as the fragment, having pierced the eye, touched the cerebral hemisphere of the brain.

Marya Oktyabrskaya was visited by a member of the military council of the front, L. Z. Mehlis, who gave the order to send her to Moscow. The last to visit her was Major Tolok, who came to present her with the Order of the Patriotic War, 1st degree, as well as gifts and letters from fellow soldiers.

On the 15th of March 1944, Marya Vasilyevna Oktyabrskaya died in the front-line hospital of Smolensk. She was buried with military honours in the Memorial Square of Heroes in Smolensk.

On the 2nd of August 1944, Marya Oktyabrskaya was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, posthumously. The commander of the 26th Guards Tank Brigade, Colonel S.K. Nesterov, noted: “During the period of combat operations and during the formation of the brigade, Comrade Oktyabrskaya lovingly cared for her combat vehicle. Comrade Oktyabrskaya, using the tank she had purchased herself for cash, took revenge on the Nazis for the death of her husband. Comrade Oktyabrskaya was a brave, fearless warrior.”

On the same day, she also reeived the Order of Lenin, posthumously.

In Tomsk the gymnasium No. 24 bears the name of Marya Vasilyevna Oktyabrskaya. A monument by the sculptor Sergey Danilin was erected in front of the entrance to the gymnasium. In Smolensk on the Alley of Heroes a monument to Maria Vasilievna was also erected.

Olivia Kroth: The journalist and author of four books lives in Russia.

Her blog:

https://olivia2010kroth.wordpress.com