Aliya Moldagulova: An Unlikely Sniper Heroine
Just 17 when she arrived at the front with her sniper rifle, Aliya was fearless and determined to defend her homeland from fascism.
By the time Aliya Moldagulova was eight years old, in 1933, she was practically an orphan. Her mother and brother had died, and her father was a prisoner of the Soviet regime where he was being persecuted for being the son of a nobleman. For a year, Aliya wandered her small, impoverished village on the Kuraili River, until her uncle intervened. He took her to her grandmother’s house, for a year, when he brought her to Moscow to live with his family. A couple of years later, they moved to Leningrad where eight family members shared a room, including Aliya.
In June, 1941, as the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, Aliya, a 16-year-old student at a boarding school in Leningrad, made the fateful decision to defend the Motherland. While the rest of her family traveled to Kazakhstan to escape the war, Aliya stayed in her boarding school.
Three months later, as the blockade of Leningrad began on September 8, 1941, Aliya immediately began defending her city from the boarding school, which was on the brink of becoming an orphanage. A former pioneer leader of this orphanage remembers Aliya well, referring to her as Leah, the Russian version of her name:
Leah was found unconscious, in the street, after she didn’t return from fetching water with a sled. “When the doctor examined Leah, it turned out that she was exhausted to the limit…As it turned out later, Leah gave half of her meagre bread ration to a small girl, with poor health, Katya. As soon as she got on her feet, she climbed to the roof and together with the others began to put out lighter bombs.”
Aliya’s unwavering determination can be seen in her uphill journey to the front line. Upon graduating from the seventh grade, she enrolled in an aviation school with the goal of becoming a pilot, but she was instead selected for a different group. Desperate to go to the front, she left the school in December, 1942 and joined the Central Women’s Sniper Training School’s first group of trainees. She was just seventeen years old.
One of her fellow cadets, N. A. Mateeva, recalls, in her memoir, how “Aliya persistently sought to volunteer for the front…Leah and I (I called her that) were enrolled in the fourth company by their height-the smallest. Placed in a greenhouse with three-tiered bunks, Leah and I slept next to each other.”
During her time at the sniper school, Aliya was awarded a personalized rifle with the inscription, “From the Central Committee of the Komsomol for excellent shooting.”
In July, 1943, Aliya’s group was assigned to the 54th rifle brigade of the 22nd Army and, by October, she’d killed 32 fascists. In a letter to her family, written on December 3, 1943, Aliya writes:
Now we are at the forefront. I am writing the letter in a deep trench, there are many trees around. We meet the Germans face to face. I have a helmet on my head, a grenade in my belt, a rifle in my hands…I don’t feel pity for Nazis, but at first I was a little worried…In the morning, on the line, our commander called me three steps forward. He said: sniper Liya Magdagulova killed 14 fascists in three days. For this feat on behalf of the command, I declare gratitude…Then in front of the others he kissed me like a son, I even blushed. Goodbye. Let’s meet with victory. Kiss. Leah
On January 11, 1944, the temperature dropped to an unbelieveable -47 degrees Celsius, but “Leah was on the front line with her sniper rifle,” writes her commander, Lieutenant Colonel Andrei Efimov in Lenin Youth (May 9, 1969). The battalion was fighting for Pskov in the Novosokoliniki district.
“At the beginning of the attack, the enemy fired artillery, mortars, and machine guns and tried to stop our soldiers,” Efimov continues. At that moment, “the heroine of the Kazakh people Leah shouted: “Forward! For the Motherland!” The battalion entered the enemy’s trenches. Leah fired a rifle and threw grenades, killing 10 enemy soldiers and one officer. Unable to withstand the onslaught of the battalion, the enemy was defeated, and the survivors fled from the fortress. The enemy attacked three times to recapture the lost line. When they formed a line and attacked the crowd, Leah took a submachine gun and opened fire, killing 28 German soldiers and officers. But they managed to get to our trench. A hand-to-hand battle began. The heroine shot eight enemy soldiers. But Leah did not notice the German officer who who got close. He wounded Leah. But she could not escape. Gathering her last strength, Leah pointed her machine gun at the officer, pulled the trigger. This was the last German killed by her.”
After this battle, Aliya underwent surgery for her wounds. Sadly, she did not survive. She was just eighteen years-old, and had killed between 32 and more than a hundred fascists, depending on the conflicting sources. Although her total tally is not known, her heroism is undeniable.
Streets are named after her in Aktyubinsk, St. Petersburg and Moscow. There is a monument dedicated to her in the center of Aktyubinsk, and in 1995, Kazakhstan issued a stamp in her honor. Two years later, a monument was built in her name in Astana Square in Almaty and, in April, 2021, Aqtobe airport was renamed Aliya Moldagulova International Airport.
Aliya Moldagulova, who rose from poverty and homelessness, is an unlikely hero whose life was tragically cut short because of her courage and resolve to defend her country. She was posthumously awarded the highest honor, Hero of the Soviet Union, and Aliya continues to be remembered and celebrated in Russia.
She was Fierce!!!
Shelly , I Look forward to reading their stories in your book .
Extreme bravery in little known stories. Great that you are honoring these women.