Women Under Suspicion : Fraternization, Espionage, and Punishment in the Soviet Union During World War II

For two years during World War II, Nazi forces occupied large swaths of the western Soviet Union.In response to devastating losses on a contested front, Stalin first permitted and then encouraged women to join the Red Army and the resistance.Simultaneously, female civilians in occupied territory found themselves in an untenable position: they could resist the occupiers and face the possibly fatal consequences or engage in sexual barter, with all the risk, shame, and disapprobation that entailed.In Women Under Suspicion, Regina Kazyulina probes these “choiceless choices” with sensitivity and nuance. Officially, women in the Soviet Union enjoyed a degree of equality unknown elsewhere in Allied countries at the time.However, long-standing norms of gendered behavior and stereotypes that cast women as morally weak, politically fallible, and sexually tempting meant that women in the army or living behind enemy lines were viewed with skepticism, seen as weak points easily exploited by the ene