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Maria BochkarevaMaria Bochkareva (1889-1920) was a Russian woman who fought in the World War I and formed the Women's Battalion of Death. Maria Bochkareva was born in Siberia in 1889. She left home at the age of 15 to marry Afansi Bochkarev and they moved to Tomsk where they worked as labourers. When her husband began to hit her, Bochkareva left him to work on a steamship. She later remarried to Yakov Buk but this marriage ended as well when he physically abused her. In 1914 she joined the 25th Reserve Battalion of the Russian Army at the outbreak of the First World War. Men of the regiment treated her with ridicule and amorous approaches until she proved her mettle in battle. In the following years Bochkareva was twice wounded and decorated three times for bravery. After the fall of the Tsar in May 1917 she convinced Alexander Kerensky to let her form a women's battalion. Women's Death Battalion fought at the Austrian front but after three months their numbers had dwindled from 2000 to about 250. During the October Revolution, on October 25, Bochkareva and remnants of her regiment tried unsuccessfully to defend the Winter Palace against Bolshevik troops. Many of the women were slain and some raped. Bolshevists detained Bochkareva and interrogated her but later she managed to escape to the USA. Communist government belittled the existence of her unit and later accounts regarded it as a legend. According to some accounts, Bochkareva arrived with British troops supporting counterrevolutionaries in Archangelsk in August 1918 but Russian officers did not accept her. Bochkareva published her memoirs, Yashka: My Life As Peasant, Exile, and Soldier in 1919. Later she tried to form a new women's battalion under the White admiral Aleksandr Kolchak in Omsk, but was again captured by the bolshevists. Omsk Cheka ordered her execution by a firing squad in May 15 1920. Bochkareva, Maria
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