Women’s Daily Life in the Occupation: Sexual Violence in Documents and Soviet Propaganda

The problem of sexual violence in the occupied Soviet territories during the Great Patriotic War is an under-researched and taboo subject in the Russian public sphere. It is viewed either from the perspective of collaboration in prostitution and cohabitation, or from the perspective of gender discrimination and sexual violence. At the same time, it is extremely difficult to differentiate these features of women’s everyday life under the conditions of the “war of annihilation”. Based on the documents of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Investigation of the Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders, partisan reports, and other documents, as well as articles from the wartime periodical press, the author compares images of sexual violence with the practices of women’s everyday life under occupation. In the propaganda of the warring countries, the image of the abused female body was actively used to incite hatred of the enemy. Rape and the forcing of women under occupation to work in brothels were presented in this light. A comparison of propaganda images and specific facts of violence presented in official and ego-documents shows the existence of discrepancies between images and practices. While rape was fairly accurately portrayed in official texts, the problem of prostitution was less accurately reflected in reality. Individual women used their bodies as a means of survival and received various material benefits in return. The population did not perceive legal prostitution in the categories of propaganda and interpreted it as a betrayal. Although some decrees were passed during the war in both Germany and the USSR that treated violence against women as a crime, women were not recognised as victims in the Soviet public trials or at the Nuremberg Tribunal and did not receive compensation. During the transition to peace, the problem of sexual violence lost its pragmatic propaganda function and was excluded from the collective memory. Nevertheless, the increase in violence against women during the Second World War led to the adoption of the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Victims of War in 1949, which was ratified by the Soviet Union in 1954.