MCC Center for Experiential Learning Director George Maniates will discuss the significance of the Russian Women’s Battalion in World War I on Monday, Sept. 9, at the USS Silversides Museum, 1346 Bluff St., in Muskegon.
The talk, which begins at 6 p.m., launches the Fall Lecture Series, entitled “Truth Is Stranger than Fiction in Military History,” being held at the USS Silversides Museum. Admission is $5 person but free to all USS Silversides Museum members.
A companion 2015 Russian film, “Battalion,” will be shown every day at 2 p.m. from Tuesday, Sept. 2, through Monday, Sept. 9. The film is included in the admission price to the museum. Museum members are free.
“Before most women could vote and 100 years before the United States Military allowed women to serve on the front line, Russian women stepped up to the plate,” said Maniates, an MCC history faculty member and National Endowment of Humanities Summer Institute scholarship recipient.
“The Russian Provincial Government formed The Women’s Battalion, all-female combat unit, after the February Revolution as a last-ditch effort to inspire the mass of war-weary soldiers to continue fighting in World War I. This effort nearly transformed the war and recast the role of female combatants in the Russian and later, Soviet Armies.”
For more information, contact George Maniates at (231) 777-0364 or at george.maniates@muskegoncc.edu.