Pasha Angelina

Praskovia Nikitichna Angelina (popularly known as Pasha Angelina; OldStyleDate|September 30 |1912|January 12|1913, Starobeshevo, Donetsk Oblast - January 21 1959, Moscow) was a celebrated Soviet udarnik and Stakhanovite at the time of the first Five Year Plans. She was glorified as one of the first female tractor-operators in the USSR, and was made a symbol of the technically educated female Soviet worker.

In 1929, she started attending tractor-driving courses in her native oblast while also working at a milk farm. In 1933, she organized an all-female tractor team that was reported to have achieved 129 % of the quota and thus to have ranked first among the tractor teams of the region. She was made an official celebrity, glorified in the media and depicted on propaganda posters. In 1935, she was among the "Champions of Agricultural Labour" selected to hold a conference with the leaders of the Party and of the state in the Kremlin. At that conference, she officially promised to organize 10 more female tractor teams in her raion. In 1938 she signed an appeal entitled "One hundred thousand (female) friends - on the tractors!" (Russian: "Сто тысяч подруг - на трактор!"). Women shouldering work with tractors made it possible for more men to be drafted into the Soviet army before and during World War Two. During the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), Angelina studied agriculture in Moscow for two years and then worked as a team leader in Kazakhstan until the end of the war. After the war, she returned to work in the same function in Starobeshevo. In 1948, Angelina authored an autobiographical work, "The people of the kolkhoz fields". She died of cirrhosis in 1959.

Awards

Angelina was twice a Hero of Socialist Labor (1947, 1958), a recipient of the Stalin Prize (1946), and was bestowed three orders of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. She was also elected into the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1937, 1946 and 1950.

ources

* Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 2nd edition.
* Great Russian Encyclopedia

References

External links

* [http://www.hrono.ru/statii/2006/angeliny.html Interview with Angelina's nephew (Russian)]
* [http://www.mk.ru/blogs/MK/2008/01/14/society/333053/ Interview with Angelina's daughter (Russian)]