When Mariya Oktyabrskaya learned her husband Ilya was killed in action fighting the Nazis near Kiev, she didn’t just get mad; she got a tank—specifically, a Red Army T-34.
The desire for vengeance drove the former Russian peasant to drive the tank, one she named “Fighting Girlfriend,” to the Eastern Front so she could deliver her justice personally. By the war’s end, she would receive the USSR’s highest award for military valor: Hero of the Soviet Union.
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On the eve of World War II, Mariya Oktyabrskaya was working in a cannery and as a telephone operator. She was also a proud military spouse. Born into Russian peasantry under Tsar Nicolas II, in what is today Ukraine. A proud Soviet citizen, Mariya Vasilyevna led the local Military Wives Council and trained as a nurse, marksman, and driver—all modern military skills she would need in the days to come.
She married her husband, Ilya Fedotovich Ryadnenko, in 1925. He became a cavalry officer, and the family adopted the name “Oktyabrskaya,” effectively renaming themselves after the October Revolution that brought the Bolsheviks to power and established the USSR.
When she learned of her husband’s death, she sold all her belongings and sent a message to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
My husband was killed in action defending the motherland. I want revenge on the fascist dogs for his death and for the death of Soviet people tortured by the fascist barbarians. For this purpose I’ve deposited all my personal savings – 50,000 rubles – to the National Bank in order to build a tank. I kindly ask to name the tank ‘Fighting Girlfriend’ and to send me to the frontline as a driver of said tank.
Stalin agreed.
In Henry Sakaida’s “Heroines of the Soviet Union,” the author says Oktyabrskaya had to prove to the Red Army commanders that she could indeed drive a tank, fire weapons, and handle grenades, but she did. She trained for five months before joining the 26th Guards Tank Brigade.
And in her first encounter with the enemy at Smolensk, she put to rest any doubt about her combat ability by killing 30 Nazi soldiers and taking out an anti-tank weapon, two machine gun nests, and some artillery pieces.
It was 1943, two years after Ilya’s death, and Mariya just earned a promotion to sergeant.
In her next fight, German artillery took out the treads of Fighting Girlfriend. As Nazi soldiers lit up the November night with tracer rounds, Oktyabrskaya hopped out of the tank, fixed the treads, and continued on her campaign of destruction.
Mariya Oktyabrskaya in “Боевая подруга” – “Fighting Girlfriend.”
She fought for months. The next time her tank lost its treads rolling over two Nazi trenches at a village called Shvedy near Vitebsk. Without hesitation, she jumped out to fix them. This time, German artillery struck close by and knocked Sgt. Oktyabrskaya into a coma – right as she finished fixing the tracks. She died of her wounds two months later.
For her fearlessness during the Great Patriotic War (what the Russians call World War II), she was posthumously awarded the Order of Lenin. She also received title “Hero of the Soviet Union,” the highest honor the USSR could bestow on its fighting men and women.
And “Fighting Girlfriend” made it all the way to Berlin.
