Road Traffic Controller of the Victory

      On 12th April, 2024 the famous Victory road traffic controller, Maria Filippovna Limanskaya, celebrated her 100th birthday.

      Maria was born in 1924 in the village of Staraya Poltavka in the Volgograd region. In 1942, at the age of 18, she went to the front line. She served in a reserve regiment, sewing warm clothes for soldiers, and later, together with her friends, became a road traffic controller. Maria’s shifts on duty were supposed to last four hours but could extend to eight, as it was difficult for her replacement to reach her during enemy aerial bombardments.

      Maria’s baptism by fire took place in the Rostov region, where she directed troop movements at a crossing over the Don River under enemy fire. There, she was accidentally hit by a driver and found herself in hospital, which was also bombed. Following her recovery, our heroine participated in one of the key battles – the Battle of Stalingrad – and went on to serve in the liberation of Simferopol, Belarus, and Poland, before eventually reaching Berlin.

      In May 1945, Maria was directing traffic near the Brandenburg Gate, on the opposite side of the Reichstag. It was there, on 2nd May, that she was photographed by Yevgeny Khaldei. Her picture was published in newspapers and magazines worldwide and she quickly became an iconic image of the victory over Nazi Germany, with Western newspapers dubbing her the ‘Brandenburg Madonna’. Maria herself received this famous photo, titled ‘Victory Traffic Controller’, with a handwritten note on the reverse from Yevgeny Khaldei almost 40 years later, in 1984.

      Maria Filippovna Limanskaya fondly recalls that on 9th May 1945, whilst directing heavy traffic, she heard a driver in one of the vehicles shout to her, “Sis[ter], it is Victory!” and throw a bundle at her feet. Upon unwrapping it, she found a pair of women’s pumps inside. The next day, Maria, along with her fellow female traffic controllers, took a single dress and headscarf, and they all attended a photo studio to have their first post-war photograph taken in civilian clothes.

      During the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, Maria directed the convoy of vehicles carrying the leaders of the Allied countries. Seeing the young girl on duty, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill stopped by her and, through a translator, wondered: “Are the English soldiers treating you well?” According to Limanskaya, she boldly replied, “Hell no, they wouldn’t dare [treat me badly]!” but the official version recorded her response as, “Let them just try.”

      After the war, Limanskaya returned to her native village, where she worked for many years as a nurse in the surgical department of the local hospital. She married a fellow veteran named Viktor with whom she remained for 23 years, until his death.

      Maria Filippovna Limanskaya was awarded the medals ‘For Victory over Germany’, ‘For the Capture of Berlin’, and the Order of the Patriotic War.

      The Female Traffic Controller monument, commonly known as Marusya or the Traffic Guard Marusya, is a monument located near Matveev Kurgan in the southeastern part of Rostov Oblast. It pays tribute to Soviet female road traffic controllers of World War II.