The essay reconstructs the journey and stay in the USA and England of the Soviet delegation invited to the International Youth Assembly in 1942. The delegation travelled for four months, with high-level meetings but also numerous popular meetings. The main sources used were, in addition to the Soviet-era archives, the newspapers of the time, in particular to recognise the reaction to a soldier woman, a sniper, which was a complete novelty and disconcerting for the Western media. On the whole, the distance and the difficulty of understanding the condition of the war in the USSR emerge. Some lesser-known aspects of L.M. Pavličenko’s life are also reconstructed.
