The White Lily of Stalingrad: read the first novel in my Russian War Trilogy on Substack
Take a Journey with Stalin's female Falcons
On the late afternoon of August 22nd, 2007, I was on the Moscow Metro heading for the beautiful Sukhaveusheya station. Waiting for us there were two veterans of Stalin’s all-female aviation regiments from World War Two, Galina Brock-Beltsova and Anna Kirilina-Romanova, advanced in age, one obviously failing, but ready to tell me their stories through their honorary interpreter, Margarita Ponomareva.
I’d already traveled to St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad) and Kursk. The idea was to research and soak up as much about the Great War (World War 2—still important to Russian culture, hence endless, titanic museums) and Russian ways as I could in a short period of time, and dig into the story of the young women aviators who fought (and many died) in the all-consuming defense of the Motherland.
Heading to a nearby hotel restaurant for what the Russians call a “business lunch,” I listened and wrote down the stories and memories of Galina and Anna. I asked my questions and they answered, proud of their service in the Great War. The honors and sacrifices were still fresh in their minds; Anna shed tears when describing the death of one of her commanders.
This story is fascinating to me. Major Marina Raskova, the driving force behind the idea of women flying in the Red Army Air Force, was a celebrity in 1930’s and 40’s Russia; Stalin knew the value of aviation in a country as vast as his and he’d turned his record-breaking, long-distance pilots into celebrities better known than movie stars. With her country reeling from the German invasion, Raskova saw a huge opportunity for female komsomol aviators who made up the majority of the training pilots in the national paramilitary organization, the Osoaviakhim.
Russian socialism extolled men and women as equals—in theory—but if a female was determined and thick-skinned enough she might crack the patriarchal ceiling. Why? Because if a qualified woman made enough waves, the males in power did not want to be seen as defying the spirit of Marx and Engels. Marina Raskova knew this.
The famous Raskova was one of Stalin’s favorites and he approved of her idea, offering her three air regiments. Russian women already were a force in science and medicine (by the end of the war, more than half the Red Army’s doctors were female). In the armed forces women served as radio operators and nurses but also commanded tanks, organized partisan resistance units and were considered superior to men as snipers.
Recruiting the best female flyers from all over Russia, Raskova and her team of career officers assembled their troika of units, consisting of one fighter regiment, one day bomber regiment and one night bomber regiment. The average age of the volunteers was around twenty years old. The best flyers became the pilots; the rest became navigators, gunners and ground crew.
While Russian commanders first tended to station the female regiments away from the Front, they all soon became enmeshed in the brutal air war. My story follows the journey of several young aviators including Lidya “Lilya” Litvyak and Katerina “Katya” Budanova—both of whom hunted the Germans over Stalingrad and beyond; they ended up serving in male regiments and became aces. The third main character, the fictional Gypsy Greenstreet, born to a Russian emigrant mother (nee Ivanova) and a wealthy New Yorker father, is a disillusioned American expatriate fresh from the failure of the Republican effort in the Spanish Civil War.
The journey of Gypsy, Lilya, Katya and many others through the pages of The White Rose of Stalingrad is fraught with immense conflict—male condescension and obstruction (some male pilots refused to fly with female wingmen), nasty Commissars, incompetent officers and political infighting—not to mention the war. That isn’t to say that there’s no light in this darkness; good men helped the women as best they could; the women were proud of their accomplishments and ready to endure the hardships; like the men, the women formed intense bonds of friendship that carried them through times of catastrophe; love affairs erupted, as they always do in times of war. The war changed these women just as it did the men, the nation of Russia and the history of the world.
On one of my last days in Moscow my group attended a dinner with Russian veterans of the Great War. I discovered, to my delight, that one elderly veteran of the Battle of Moscow named Viktor, had been a fighter pilot and he’d gotten his early flight training from an instructress named Lidya Litvyak. He described her as “masterful” in the air, adding that he would have flown into battle with her any time and anywhere.
That was all I needed, though he gave me more details. His memories, along with those of the two female veterans, are seeded throughout The White Rose of Stalingrad. (The White Lily of Stalingrad is more accurate and I’m bouncing between both, but I’ll poll you guys on the title later). I’ve researched as much as I can, down to unit movements and the caliber of bullets and the jazz bands playing in pre-war Moscow at the time, though little record remains of the women’s personal lives beyond a few surviving letters and the recollections of contemporaries who might be looking to improve their legacy in the historic record.
This book is historical fiction so I’ve obviously had to flesh out the inner thoughts, emotions and conversations of the characters on my own, like adding internal organs, muscles and skin to a skeleton of research. But I can say this: I believe my story captures something of the true experience and spirit of Lilya, Katya and many others during a unique moment in history.
Please consider becoming a paying subscriber to this newsletter and take the journey of these brave women along with me, chapter by chapter. I’m exclusively releasing the full novel in installments here before putting it out in the world. Paying subscribers will also have access to related articles about my trip to Russia plus lots of other tidbits from research and the creative process. I hope you join our little community! It’s gonna be fun!