Where did Lyudmila Pavlichenko fight?

She fought in two sieges on the Black Sea coast with the 25th Rifle Division: first at Odessa in 1941, then for about eight months at Sevastopol. In June 1942 she was wounded and taken off the front line. She never fought again and spent the rest of the war training other snipers.

Did Lyudmila Pavlichenko meet Eleanor Roosevelt?

Yes. She was received at the White House soon after she reached Washington on 27 August 1942, and Eleanor Roosevelt wrote warmly of her in her newspaper column. The First Lady then invited her to tour the country, and in 1957 she visited Pavlichenko in her small apartment in Moscow.

Was Pavlichenko the first Soviet citizen at the White House?

The National WWII Museum and Smithsonian magazine both describe her as the first Soviet citizen welcomed at the White House. The Washington Daily News reported that she and the two other Soviet delegates would be guests of President and Mrs. Roosevelt on 27 August 1942, the day they arrived for the student assembly.

Lyudmila Pavlichenko: 309 Credited Kills, Legend and Record

Q: Who was Lyudmila Pavlichenko?

Lyudmila Pavlichenko (1916 to 1974) was a Ukrainian-born Soviet sniper of the 25th Rifle Division. She fought at Odessa and Sevastopol in 1941 and 1942, where Soviet records credit her with 309 kills. After being wounded she toured the United States, Canada and Britain in 1942, and in 1943 she was made a Hero of the Soviet Union.

Q: How many kills did Lyudmila Pavlichenko have?

Soviet records credit her with 309 enemy soldiers and officers, including 36 snipers, by July 1942. Her memoir’s publisher gives 29 snipers instead of 36. The total is an official Soviet tally with no published list of kills, and the National Museum of the History of Ukraine, in Kyiv, notes that it is disputed.

Q: What did Pavlichenko say in Chicago?

In Chicago she told a crowd that she was 25 years old and had already killed 309 fascists, and asked the men whether they had not been hiding behind her back for too long. The line summed up her mission in North America: to press the Allies to open a second front in Europe.

Q: What happened to Pavlichenko after the war?

She finished her history degree at Kyiv University and worked as a researcher at the Main Staff of the Soviet Navy until 1953. She had been made a Hero of the Soviet Union on 25 October 1943 and held the Order of Lenin. In 1957 Eleanor Roosevelt visited her in Moscow. She died in October 1974.

Justice Robert Jackson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Washington, September 1942. Photo: Jack Delano, US Office of War Information, Library of Congress, public domain

Quick answer

Who was Lyudmila Pavlichenko?

Lyudmila Pavlichenko (1916 to 1974) was a Soviet sniper from Ukraine who fought at Odessa and Sevastopol in 1941 and 1942. Soviet records credit her with 309 kills, a figure that is still disputed. In 1942 she toured the United States, Canada and Britain, and in 1943 she was made a Hero of the Soviet Union.

Pavlichenko fought in two sieges on the Black Sea coast with the 25th Rifle Division: the siege of Odessa in 1941 and the siege of Sevastopol in 1941 and 1942, where she was wounded. These were her only battles. After she was wounded she never returned to the front, and she spent the rest of the war training other snipers.¹

What was Lyudmila Pavlichenko famous for?

Pavlichenko is known as the most successful woman sniper on record: Soviet records credit her with 309 kills, 36 of them enemy snipers. She became just as well known for her 1942 tour of the United States, where she was received at the White House, befriended Eleanor Roosevelt and argued for a second front in Europe.²

She became known as “Lady Death”, and the English edition of her memoir carries that title. In Kyiv, the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War exhibits her as a Ukrainian, “the most successful female sniper” and a Hero of the Soviet Union, while noting that her official biography is now being re-examined.³

A student from Kyiv

She was born in 1916 in Bila Tserkva, a town south of Kyiv, and her family later moved to Kyiv. There she worked at the Arsenal factory and took up shooting. In 1937 she entered the history faculty of Kyiv University, and as a student she also attended a sniper school. She was in her fourth year when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.⁴

Odessa and Sevastopol, 1941 to 1942

She volunteered in the first weeks of the war. She was offered a post as a nurse, but joined the 25th Rifle Division as a sniper, in its 54th Rifle Regiment. Both her publisher and the National WWII Museum count her among about 2,000 women snipers of the Red Army. Her division fought in the defense of Odessa and then moved to Sevastopol.⁵ › Siege of Odessa, 1941

At Sevastopol she fought for about eight months. In May 1942, by then a lieutenant, she was cited for 257 kills. In June 1942 she was wounded and taken off the front line. A Washington paper reported that August that she had been wounded four times, as Smithsonian magazine also writes, adding that shrapnel had hit her face. She did not fight again.⁶

Color air chart of the Crimean peninsula with Sevastopol marked at its southwestern tip, Simferopol and Yalta inland and on the south coast — The Crimea on an air chart of the 1940s, with Sevastopol at the southwestern tip of the peninsula. Public domain

How many kills did Lyudmila Pavlichenko have?

Soviet records credit Pavlichenko with 309 enemy soldiers and officers killed by July 1942, including 36 snipers. The figure was already public when she reached Washington in August 1942. It is an official Soviet tally: no list of individual kills has been published, and the National Museum of the History of Ukraine notes that the number is disputed.⁷

Accounts differ on the details. Most give 36 snipers among the 309, but the publisher of her memoir gives 29. One Washington paper printed 309 on the day she arrived, while a photo caption in another said 300. The US National Park Service, for its part, notes estimates that her real total was higher. Either way, the number is the tally credited by the Soviet army, which from 1942 also used her story as publicity abroad.⁸

Her own words to the press fit that role. At a press conference in the Soviet Embassy on 28 August 1942 she said that dead Germans were harmless, so a German killed meant lives saved. She also said that German loudspeakers had called on her to come over to them in return for chocolate.⁹

Why did Pavlichenko go to the United States?

Pavlichenko went to the United States in August 1942 as a Soviet delegate to the International Student Assembly in Washington. Her wider task, as the National WWII Museum and the National Museum of the History of Ukraine describe it, was to win support for an Allied second front in Europe that would take pressure off the Red Army.¹⁰

She arrived at Union Station on 27 August 1942 with another sniper, Vladimir Pchelintsev, a Hero of the Soviet Union, and a Moscow youth leader, Nikolai Krasavchenko. According to the Washington Daily News, the three were to be guests of President and Mrs. Roosevelt that evening. The National WWII Museum and Smithsonian magazine describe her as the first Soviet citizen welcomed at the White House.¹¹

A smiling young woman in Soviet army uniform speaks at a wooden lectern with a microphone, an American flag beside her and tall columns behind — Pavlichenko addresses the International Student Assembly in Washington, D.C., in September 1942. Photograph for the US Office of War Information, Library of Congress. Public domain

On the evening of 2 September she spoke for the Soviet Union at the assembly. In her newspaper column of 3 September, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote that she had dined with the Dutch and Soviet delegates and found “something very charming” about the young lieutenant, who had suffered, she wrote, as all these young people had.¹²

Reporters asked her about makeup, her skirt and her hair. “Don’t they know there is a war?” she said of them in an interview quoted by Time. Eleanor Roosevelt then invited her to tour the country. In Chicago she told a crowd that she was 25 and had killed 309 fascists, and asked the men whether they had not been hiding behind her back for too long. Woody Guthrie wrote a song about her.¹³

Lyudmila Pavlichenko in uniform sitting on the grass beside a man in a suit, with an officer standing behind them — Pavlichenko (right) with two other members of the Soviet delegation in Washington, D.C., in September 1942, photographed by Jack Delano for the US Office of War Information. Public domain

She also spoke at rallies in Canada, and in November 1942 she was in Britain, still making the case for a second front.¹⁴

What happened to Pavlichenko after the war?

Pavlichenko never returned to combat. She trained snipers until the end of the war, went back to Kyiv University to finish her history degree, and then worked as a researcher at the Main Staff of the Soviet Navy until 1953. In 1957 Eleanor Roosevelt visited her in Moscow. She died in October 1974.¹⁵

On 25 October 1943 she was made a Hero of the Soviet Union, and she was awarded the Order of Lenin. In February 1945 the Associated Press reported from Moscow that she was back at Kyiv State University, preparing to become a history teacher.¹⁶

Eleanor Roosevelt, visiting the Soviet Union in 1957, insisted on seeing her and was taken to Pavlichenko’s small Moscow apartment, where Soviet officials watched over the meeting.¹⁷

Legend and record

Two parts of her story are well documented: her service at Odessa and Sevastopol, attested by her decorations, and her 1942 tour, recorded by American reporters, photographers and Eleanor Roosevelt herself. The hardest part to check is the one most often repeated, the exact count. The Kyiv war museum notes that her family, service and foreign travels are being re-examined, and that the number of Germans she killed is disputed.¹⁸

The photographs on this page were taken by Jack Delano for the US Office of War Information during the student assembly and are kept in the Library of Congress. They are evidence of the tour and of how Washington chose to present its new ally. They tell us nothing about Sevastopol.¹⁹

Her memoir appeared in English in 2018 as Lady Death (Greenhill Books), edited by Alla Begunova, with a foreword by Martin Pegler; the Russian text had been published in Moscow in 2015. Pavlichenko died in 1974, so everything in it was written in the Soviet Union, by an officer whose story had been state publicity since 1942. It shows how she wanted her war remembered. It cannot confirm the numbers on its own.²⁰

How she is remembered

In 1945 the Associated Press called Pavlichenko the Soviet Union’s most famous woman sniper, and she belongs in any account of women warriors in history. The wider war she was part of is told in our guide to the greatest battles of the Eastern Front. For Americans in 1942 she was a first look at the Soviet ally. For historians she is also a case of how a soldier’s record and a state’s publicity can become hard to separate.²¹

Notes

A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.

State Russian Museum, “Высоцкий В. П. Снайпер Л. Павлюченко. 1942”; National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”; Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; Gilbert King, “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper”. ↩
State Russian Museum, “Высоцкий В. П. Снайпер Л. Павлюченко. 1942”; Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; Gilbert King, “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper”; National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”. ↩
Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”; Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Lady Death. ↩
State Russian Museum, “Высоцкий В. П. Снайпер Л. Павлюченко. 1942”; National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”; Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; Eric Faeder, “‘Lady Death’ and The First Lady”. ↩
National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”; Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Lady Death; State Russian Museum, “Высоцкий В. П. Снайпер Л. Павлюченко. 1942”; The Washington Daily News, “Red Student Assembly Delegates No Weaklings”. ↩
Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; Gilbert King, “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper”; National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”; The Washington Daily News, “Bagged 309 Nazis”. ↩
State Russian Museum, “Высоцкий В. П. Снайпер Л. Павлюченко. 1942”; National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”; The Washington Daily News, “Bagged 309 Nazis”; Evening Star, “Soviet delegates’ press conference”. ↩
State Russian Museum, “Высоцкий В. П. Снайпер Л. Павлюченко. 1942”; Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Lady Death; The Washington Daily News, “Bagged 309 Nazis”; Evening Star, “Woman Sniper Here for Parley”; Eric Faeder, “‘Lady Death’ and The First Lady”. ↩
Evening Star, “Soviet delegates’ press conference”; The Washington Daily News, “Red Student Assembly Delegates No Weaklings”; Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”. ↩
The Washington Daily News, “Bagged 309 Nazis”; Evening Star, “Woman Sniper Here for Parley”; Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”. ↩
Evening Star, “Woman Sniper Here for Parley”; The Washington Daily News, “Bagged 309 Nazis”; Evening Star, “Soviet Sniper Heroes Eager to Return to War Front”; Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; Gilbert King, “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper”. ↩
Evening Star, “International Student Assembly opens”; The Washington Daily News, “Bagged 309 Nazis”; Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day, September 3, 1942”; Eric Faeder, “‘Lady Death’ and The First Lady”. ↩
Evening Star, “Soviet delegates’ press conference”; Time, “Lady Sniper”; Eric Faeder, “‘Lady Death’ and The First Lady”; Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; Gilbert King, “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper”. ↩
Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Lady Death; Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; Evening Star, “Churchill’s Armistice Day speech in the Commons”; National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”. ↩
Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; Gilbert King, “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper”; State Russian Museum, “Высоцкий В. П. Снайпер Л. Павлюченко. 1942”; National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”; Eric Faeder, “‘Lady Death’ and The First Lady”; Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Lady Death. ↩
State Russian Museum, “Высоцкий В. П. Снайпер Л. Павлюченко. 1942”; National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”; Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; Evening Star, “Famed Sniper Now Is Co-ed”; The Washington Daily News, “Bagged 309 Nazis”; Time, “Lady Sniper”. ↩
Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; Gilbert King, “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper”. ↩
State Russian Museum, “Высоцкий В. П. Снайпер Л. Павлюченко. 1942”; National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”; Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day, September 3, 1942”; Evening Star, “Soviet delegates’ press conference”. ↩
Library of Congress, “Washington, D.C. International youth assembly. Liudmila Pavlichenko, famous Russian sniper, with Mrs. Roosevelt and Justice Robert Jackson”; Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”. ↩
Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Lady Death; Open Library, catalog record of Lady Death. ↩
Connie Gentry, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army”; National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief”; Evening Star, “Famed Sniper Now Is Co-ed”. ↩

Sources

State Russian Museum, Virtual Branch, “Высоцкий В. П. Снайпер Л. Павлюченко. 1942” (biographical note to a 1942 drawing, in Russian)
National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, Kyiv, “Liudmyla Pavlychenko’s Handkerchief” (collection note)
Connie Gentry, The National WWII Museum, New Orleans, “‘Lady Death’ of the Red Army: Lyudmila Pavlichenko”, 22 March 2021
Gilbert King, “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper”, Smithsonian Magazine, 21 February 2013
Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Lady Death: The Memoirs of Stalin's Sniper, foreword by Martin Pegler, Greenhill Books, 2018, publisher’s page (description of the book and of the author)
Eric Faeder, National Park Service, Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site, “‘Lady Death’ and The First Lady”, 23 February 2022
The Washington Daily News, 29 August 1942, James Daniel, “Red Student Assembly Delegates No Weaklings”, Library of Congress, Chronicling America
The Washington Daily News, 27 August 1942, “Bagged 309 Nazis: Soviet Girl Sniper Guest of President” (United Press), Library of Congress, Chronicling America
Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 28 August 1942, “Soviet delegates’ press conference” (report), Library of Congress, Chronicling America
Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 27 August 1942, “Woman Sniper Here for Parley” (Associated Press photograph and caption), Library of Congress, Chronicling America
Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 29 August 1942, “Soviet Sniper Heroes Eager to Return to War Front”, Library of Congress, Chronicling America
Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 3 September 1942, “International Student Assembly opens” (report), Library of Congress, Chronicling America
Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day, September 3, 1942”, The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (primary source)
Time, 28 September 1942, “Lady Sniper” (Army & Navy section)
Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 11 November 1942, “Churchill’s Armistice Day speech in the Commons” (Associated Press report), Library of Congress, Chronicling America
Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 11 February 1945, “Famed Sniper Now Is Co-ed” (Associated Press, Moscow, 10 February), Library of Congress, Chronicling America
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, “Washington, D.C. International youth assembly. Liudmila Pavlichenko, famous Russian sniper, with Mrs. Roosevelt and Justice Robert Jackson”, photograph by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information, 1942 (catalog record)
Open Library, catalog record of Lady Death (Greenhill Books, 2018), from library MARC records (editor, translator, foreword and the 2015 Moscow original)