Rachkevich was born on 22 December 1907 in what was then the village of Nadnestrryanskoye in the Russian Empire, now located within present-day Ukraine.

[5][6][7] After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 Rachkevich was the commissar of a military field hospital from July 16 to September 28.

During the war she occasionally accompanied bombing sorties, flying as a navigator on 36 missions in addition to equipping the Po-2s for flights.

[8][9] After re-entering the military in 1951 Rachkevich served as a political instructor for a unit of Soviet troops in East Germany until she retired in 1956 with the rank of Lieutenant colonel.

After retirement from the military she lived in Moscow where she involved herself in public work; she later managed to locate the remains of all members of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment shot down in the war, marking the crash sites as memorials.