# Valentina Khetagurova

Valentina Semyonovna Khetagurova (Russian: Валентина Семёновна Хетагурова; 1914–1992), was a founder of the Khetagurova movement (Khetagurovite Campaign), a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union for the Russian Far East.

## Biography

Valentina Zarubina was born in St. Petersburg in 1914. When she was seventeen, in 1932, she enlisted to work on the De-Kastri Fortified district in the Far Eastern Federal District where she worked as a draughtsman. There, she became the leader of the Komsomol cell and became involved in the fight against illiteracy and in organizing the weekly day off. Working with the women in the cell, she helped to improve the daily life including the soldier's food and arranging leisure activities. In 1936, for her work in Siberia she was awarded with the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. She was awarded a gold watch by Kliment Voroshilov, the People's Commissioner for Defense of the USSR. The following year she was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union.

## Khetagurovite Campaign

In 1937, Khetagurova wrote a letter to the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda calling for women to volunteer to work in the Far East. During the construction of Komsomolsk-on-Amur the population included 6,000 male workers for every 30 women. When it was completed there were 300 men to every 3 women. Thousands of women responded to Khetagurova's call and the movement was known as Хетагуровское движение (Khetagourovskoe dviznenie, Khetagurovite Campaign), the members of the movement were known as khetagourovki (khetagurovites). By the autumn of 1937 11,500 women arrived in the Far East.

## Personal life

Khetagurova married the commander of the Red Army Georgy Khetagurov. Khetagurova died in 1992. She is buried in Moscow in the Novodevichy Cemetery.

## Legacy

In 1937 Yevgeny Petrov wrote Young Patriots, devoted to Khetagurova and the movement she organized. Isaak Dunayevsky wrote a song dedicated to the Khetagurova movement and movement appears in a poem by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky. A street in the town of Komsomolsk-on-Amur bears her name.

## References and sources

* ↑ Koenker, Diane P. (2011-03-31). "Stalinism on the Frontier of Empire: Women and State Formation in the Soviet Far East (review)". Journal of Social History. 44 (3): 960–962. doi:10.1353/jsh.2011.0020. ISSN 1527-1897. S2CID 201789878.
* ↑ Shchurko, Tatsiana; Suchland, Jennifer (2021), "Postcoloniality in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia", The Routledge Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia, pp. 71–79, doi:10.4324/9781138347762-12, ISBN 9781138347762, S2CID 236226661, retrieved 2023-03-01
* 1 2 3 4 Breyfogle, N.; Schrader, A.; Sunderland, W. (2007). Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History. BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies. Taylor & Francis. p. 234. ISBN 978-1-134-11288-3. Retrieved 2020-06-22.
* 1 2 3 Shulman, E. (2008). Stalinism on the Frontier of Empire: Women and State Formation in the Soviet Far East. Cambridge University Press. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-521-89667-2. Retrieved 2020-06-22.
* 1 2 Clements, Barbara Evans (2012), A History of Women in Russia: From Earliest Times to the Present, Indiana University Press
* ↑ Shulman, Elena (2003). "Soviet Maidens for the Socialist Fortress: The Khetagurovite Campaign to Settle the Far East, 1937-39". The Russian Review. 62 (3): 387–410. doi:10.1111/1467-9434.00283. JSTOR 3664463.
* ↑ Limited, Alamy (1938-08-18). "Young girls go to the Far East at the call of Valentina Khetagurova a Red Army commander wife". Alamy. Retrieved 2020-06-22. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
* ↑ Shulman, Elena (2008). "Introduction". Stalinism on the Frontier of Empire. pp. 1–26. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511497131.003. ISBN 9780511497131. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
* ↑ Shulman, Elena (2017-09-08). "Introduction: Engendering the Soviet Empire. And. Women as Soviet Empire Builders in the late 1930s". SILO of research documents. Retrieved 2020-06-22.
* ↑ "Fashioning Women Under Totalitarian Regimes: "New Women" of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia".
* ↑ Mail.ru, Новости (2020-04-08). "Девушки с характером". Новости Mail.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 2020-06-22.
* ↑ "Хетагуровки, или Дальневосточницы - это звучит гордо". Словесница Искусств (in Russian). Retrieved 2020-06-22.