Nina Konstantinovna Petrova (Ed.), Zhenshchiny Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny [Women of the Great Patriotic War]. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii, Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, Moskva, Beche, 2014, 692 pages

"Dokumenty svidetelstvuiut" ("the documents bear witness“, p. 3) – with these words editor Nina Petrova begins one of the first paragraphs in the introduction. In accordance with this credo she formulates the aim for this source book with 288 very different documents on and by Soviet women who lived through the period of the “Great Patriotic War” 1941-1945: to save the “image of the Soviet woman, the patriot, the warrior, the toiler, and the soldier’s mother in the people’s memory forever” (p...