Myth of Women Snipers Returns

Some legends die hard.


During the 1994-96 campaign in Chechnya, Russian media were full of tales about an unlikely adversary: a sinister group of Estonian female snipers called the beliye kolgotki, or "white stockings" - cold-blooded, fair-haired killers who preyed on Russian troops.


Many a reporter covering Russia's last war in Chechnya tried, to no avail, to find the fabled assassins, and eventually the story was dismissed as a rather bizarre form of war propaganda.


But despite a conspicuous lack of evidence, the fable of the white stockings lives on: According to recent reports from the Chechen front, the nefarious blue-eyed snipers are back - and deadlier than ever.


If media reports quoting Defense Ministry sources are to be believed, the steely blond assassins are the perfect killing machine. Mercenaries paid on a per-kill basis, the women are said to produce their victim's head as proof of a hit and even aim for soldiers' genitals at the behest of their Chechen paymasters.


Still, white stockings sightings are in notably short supply. The daily newspaper Segodnya last week did its best to nudge the legend along, reporting that two female snipers had been killed and one captured in the north Caucasus during Russia's latest round of fighting with Chechen rebels.


According to the report, the captured sniper was detected while posing as a refugee, holding a child that was not her own. Two of the snipers were reportedly from the Baltics and the third was from Ukraine, although the article failed to give any names or to clarify which woman had which nationality.


Adding a peculiar new twist to the familiar refrain, the article went on to say that all three were former biathlon competitors who were highly trained in marksmanship.


Alexander Tikhonov, the head of the Russian Biathlon Federation, laughed heartily at the suggestion that female biathletes were being used as snipers in Chechnya.


"This is complete nonsense," said Tikhonov, pointing out that the training for a biathlete marksman is completely different from that received by a sniper.


Every war has its propaganda and misinformation campaigns, but the white stockings legend seems more bizarre than most.


The origin of the legend lies in an odd mixture of historical fact, cultural legend and ethnic stereotyping, said Boris Kagarlitsky, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Comparative Politics. "This comes from very interesting cultural and historical roots," Kagarlitsky said. "In the Soviet Army during World War II, the snipers were often women."


Historian and journalist Brian Moynahan, in his book "The Russian Century," wrote, "The huge loss of men in the opening months of [World War II] made it possible for women to volunteer for specialist training as snipers." One female sniper, according to Moynahan, was credited with picking off some 309 Germans singlehandedly.


Kagarlitsky said that the idea for handing women rifles came from the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939, when the Finnish military was rumored to be using women as snipers to pick off Russian invaders. Female snipers from the Baltic states - this time from Latvia - were also reportedly used during the Russian Civil War of 1918-20.


By the time World War II broke out, Soviet generals had apparently decided that female snipers were a good idea and began to train women to terrorize German soldiers.


"There was a belief that women were more cruel and more patient," Kagarlitsky said. "To kill somebody in cold blood, you needed a woman."


The recent Segodnya article echoed the sentiment. "Women are more patient than men," the article read. "They can wait, and this is fundamental in the work of a sniper. Also, it is much easier for women to infiltrate the opponent's territory."


Beyond mere gender stereotyping, the white stockings legend seems to have been recycled in Chechnya for the more disturbing reason of stirring up propaganda and ethnic prejudices.


"In a war you need to form a hate image of the enemy, and the image of the beliye kolgotki in the Chechen conflict serves very useful military propaganda purposes," Kagarlitsky said.


"Here, you have the merging of two powerful images of perceived evil. One is the image of the witch, a very powerful symbol in Russian culture. In this case, a blond-haired, blue-eyed sniper with an almost fascist appearance. On the other hand you have the stereotype of the evil, dark-skinned Moslem. This makes the perfect hate image to feed to the public."


And then there is the continued Russian tension over the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union - an antipathy that runs particularly high with the Baltic states, which Moscow accuses of violating the rights of their Russian minorities.


Estonia has added its own fuel to the fire in the past by openly and vocally backing Chechen independence. Former Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev, who was killed during the last Caucasus war, was a Soviet military officer stationed in Estonia in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He reportedly won the locals' hearts by refusing to fire on Estonian independence demonstrators.


In one high-class hotel in Tartu - the heart of Estonian nationalism - there is even a "Dudayev suite."


"In terms of demonizing the enemy, Chechen rebel fighters and Estonian female snipers are a potent combination," Kagarlitsky said.