Background
Antonina was born on January 20, 1897, in the village of Shevyryalovo, near Sarapul, in a poor peasant family. She learned from childhood hard peasant labor. When her parents died she moved to her sister to Sarapul.
Antonina was born on January 20, 1897, in the village of Shevyryalovo, near Sarapul, in a poor peasant family. She learned from childhood hard peasant labor. When her parents died she moved to her sister to Sarapul.
At the insistence of her father, Antonina Palshina graduated from the parish school.
In 1913, Antonina moved to Baku, where she found work in a bakery.
Driven by a patriotic feeling, Antonina decided to go to the front. Until 1917, women were not even taken into the army as volunteers, although there were isolated exceptions, but only by the personal order of the emperor.
Having bought a soldier’s uniform at the market, Antonina came to the recruiting station in September 1914. So the volunteer Anton Tikhonovich Palshin appeared in the army. A strong peasant girl managed to impersonate a guy. After completing a course of an accelerated initial soldier training, she was sent to the cavalry on the Caucasian Front.
She participated in cavalry attacks, and in heavy defensive battles. In one of the battles near the Turkish fortress of Hasankala, the squadron in which Palshin fought fell under massive enemy fire. The squadron commander died, non-commissioned officers were killed or wounded. Antonina led the attack, rushing to the enemy. The surviving fighters supported her, the enemy was put to flight. In the battle, Antonina was wounded, her colleagues took her from the front line and sent her to the hospital. It was not possible to hide the secret from the doctors. Soon, the regiment learned that the fighter Palshin was a girl. Antonina did not want to return to her regiment, where everyone knew about her now, and after recovering she decided to go to another front. At the train station in Baku, she was detained to verify her identity. Again, it was opened that she was a girl, and Antonina was sent to her relatives in Sarapul.
Antonina sought to find an opportunity to go to the front again. Short-term nursing courses helped. In May 1915, a new sister of mercy appeared on a southwestern front in one of the hospitals located in Lviv. The work was extremely important, but it weighed on Antonina.
There was no official opportunity to get to the front, and Antonina again decided to "become a man." At night in the hospital the sister of mercy disappeared, it didn’t cause much excitement, it was considered that the girl had just fled home. And soon in the 75th infantry regiment of Sevastopol appeared a young, but surprisingly skilled soldier Anton Palshin. She again distinguished herself in battle but was soon again exposed. By the summer of 1915, a woman serving in the army under a male surname was no longer a rarity, although such cases did not particularly advertise. The brave fighter was left to serve, although the command now knew that Palshin was a woman.
In the battle of Chernivtsi, she raised a soldier's attack. In this battle, Antonina was wounded. She was in the hospital until the summer of 1917.
Before the October Revolution, Palshina returned to Sarapul. Antonina supported the Bolsheviks, first worked in the executive committee, and when the city was captured by Kolchak’s troops, she participated in the underground struggle.
Antonina Palshina tried to go to the front when the Second World War began, but she was refused - she was already over 40 years old. Throughout the war, Antonina worked conscientiously in the rear, trying to make her contribution to the victory over the enemy. In 1956 she retired.
Despite the serious wounds received at the First World War, the famine and exhausting work during the war years, Antonina Palshina was always strong in spirit, amazing people around her with inexhaustible optimism and love of life.
In 1920, Antonina married the commissar of the 4th Cavalry Division of the 1st Cavalry Army, Grigory Frolov. After some period of time, she divorced her husband and with two children returned to Sarapul. In 1932, Antonina married again to Grigory Pridatko. She lived with her husband not richly, but happily. But the Great Patriotic War began, Grigory volunteered to the front and died in 1943.
