Mariya Vasilyevna was born on August 3, 1902, in the village of Blizhnee, Crimea. She was born into a simple peasant family. The former woman tanker spent her childhood and youth in Sevastopol. In 1921, Maria first moved to Dzhankoy, and then to Simferopol. In 1930s Maria's parents were dispossessed and sent to the Urals in the Sverdlovsk region.
Mariya finished 6th grade at school in Dzhankoy.
On May 3, 1943, Mariya Vasilyevna began to study at the Omsk Tank School, she passed all the exams with excellent marks and received a driver’s certificate.
After completing studies, Mariya Oktyabrskaya worked at a cannery in the city of Simferopol, and also worked as a telephone operator at the city telephone exchange.
In 1941, after Mariya's husband's death, she turned to the local recruitment office with a request to send her to the front, but they did not take her, refusing several times. The military enlistment office referred to her disease (tuberculosis of the cervical spine) and her age.
But Mariya Oktyabrskaya was not going to give up. Having decided simply to change the path to achieving the goal. At that time, the country was collecting funds for the defense fund. Therefore, Mariya Oktyabrskaya had the idea to purchase a tank. Together with her sister, she sold in the market all the things that she managed to amass. But this amount was not enough. Then Mariya Oktyabrskaya decided to do what she knew how to do very well. She began to sell her own embroidery and, through her own labor, accumulated the amount she lacked. For months, day after day, the stubborn woman worked painstakingly and hard. Even during the war years, the inhabitants of Tomsk willingly bought up tablecloths, scarves, pillowcases, and napkins embroidered by the skilled craftswoman. As a result, the amount required for the construction of the tank was collected.
After five months of training, in September 1943 Oktyabrskaya was sent to a reserve T-34 tank company, part of the 26th Guards Tank Brigade. The unit was quickly sent to the front near Smolensk to join the 2nd Guards Tank Corps. The brigade commander, Colonel S.K. Nesterov, kept Mariya Oktyabrskaya out of combat for a month to allow her time to become accustomed to the battlefield, much against her wishes. On 21 October 1943, during an assault on Hill 208 near Novoe Selo of Vitebsk Region in Belorussia, Oktyabrskaya's tank was the first to break into enemy positions. A testimonial that recommended her for the Order of Patriotic War I Class reported that in her very first battle Oktyabrskaya had distinguished herself while maneuvering her tank onto enemy firing positions. Her tank took part in the capture of Novoe Selo on 17-18 November 1943, during which she received a slight wound while assisting in track repairs. In the fight for the village of Shvedy on 17 January 1944, Mariya Oktyabrskaya knocked out a self-propelled Ferdinand gun, destroyed a machine-gun nest, and went on to flatten an earth-and-timber emplacement. On this occasion, she was seriously wounded in the head by shrapnel while assisting in track repairs and died in a military hospital in Smolensk two months later.
Mariya Oktyabrskaya served for only a few months as a tank driver-mechanic with the 26th Tank Brigade, 2nd Tatsinsky Guards Tank Corps, on the 3rd Belorussian Front before she was fatally wounded in combat, but she proved herself a fearless, confident, and expert tank driver who took good care of her vehicle and a full-fledged member of her tank crew, mostly young men approximately half her age.
Mariya Oktyabrskaya was awarded posthumously the Hero of the Soviet Union on 2 August 1944.
Quotations:
"For the death of my husband, for the death of all Soviet people tortured by fascist barbarians, I want to take revenge on the fascist dogs, for which I have contributed all my personal savings to the state bank for building a tank - 50,000 rubles. I ask you to call the tank "Fighting Girlfriend" and send me to the front as the driver of this tank."
"The German border is not so close, but we will reach it. We will reach the very den of the beast and forever discourage the hunt to fight against our country. I will smash the Germans while my heartbeats!"
Mariya Oktyabrskaya stood out for her exquisite taste in clothing and was also a skilled needlewoman.
Physical Characteristics: Mariya Oktyabrskaya was a short, small woman already in her forties.
Quotes from others about the person
"Fight like the tank crews of the 'Fighting Girlfriend'. Only today the crew of the glorious machine destroyed a platoon of Nazi bandits." - Commander of the battalion
In 1925, Mariya married Ilya Fedotovich Ryadnenko, a student of the cavalry school. They took a new surname Oktyabrsky. Being a military wife, she moved after her husband to various settlements of Ukraine, was elected to various women's councils of units. In late summer 1941, she received a letter that her husband died in one of the battles in Ukraine, which occurred on August 9, 1941.
