Soviet women of the 1940s (PHOTOS)

Ivan Shagin, Andrey Novikov/MAMM/MDF
World War II recalibrated the way that Russian women looked and dressed. Many wore military uniform or worked in factories in the rear. Victory on May 9, 1945, provided a long-awaited reason to relax. Simple pleasures, such as walking and sunbathing by the sea, were caught on camera.
By the Bronze Horseman, Leningrad
Woman with sheaf
A rest house in Irkutsk Region

Two days before the start of the war. Graduates of 1941

Construction workers

Construction of the Dnieper-Bug Canal. Women with shovels

17-year-old nurse Nina Burakova bandaging a wounded soldier

At a defense factory. Female

Girl and soldier at a well

Demobilized women soldiers head home

Portrait of Evdokia Pasko, Hero of the Soviet Union and navigator of the all-female 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment

“My contribution”: an elderly woman knits socks

My grandmother Alexandra Gerasimovna Ilinykh (Salnik)

Defender of the besieged Leningrad after the war

Classmates in the streets of the ruined Minsk

Komsomol girls at the XI Congress of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League

Vacation in Crimea

A riverside walk

Anna Akhmatova at the home of Viktor Ardov

A rest house in Irkutsk Region
Woman on board a steamship

Artek camp in Crimea. View of the Adalar Islands

Actress Lidiya Smirnova

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