Few of today's readers are familiar with the name of Valentina Iovovna Dmitrieva, a Russian writer who wrote and published prose, poetry, journalism and memoirs. And at the beginning of the twentieth century, she was known among a wide circle of the Russian intelligentsia.
Biography
Valentina Iovovna was born in a small village in the Saratov province in 1859. Her father was a serf, but he was literate and served as manager of the estate for Count Naryshkin. The Dmitriev family was quite wealthy, and Valentina could be provided with a decent education. However, she herself prepared for the exams and entered the Tambov women's gymnasium, and she stepped over three classes at once.
In the gymnasium, she met with revolutionary-minded youth, was a member of various circles.
Career
In 1877, Dmitrieva graduated from high school and went to work in the Peschanskaya Sloboda in the Saratov province as a teacher. Having lived there for an academic year, she left a noticeable mark on the cultural life of the province: she wrote short stories and notes in the Saratov newspapers, and they were often critical and satirical. This did not suit the local authorities, and they tried in every possible way to get the Sandy teacher out of the village.
However, she herself was not going to stay there, because she became a student of the Higher Medical Courses in St. Petersburg.
She studied to be a doctor and did not stop writing: she sent stories and stories to the capital's magazines, and they printed them, because even then it was clear that Dmitrieva had her own style, original style and clarity of description of events.
The first published story was "To the soul, but not according to reason", and then published "Akhmetkina's wife" and others.
The young literary woman was noticed by the famous writer Nadezhda Dmitrievna Khvoshchinskaya and wanted to get to know her. She communicated warmly with Valentina Dmitrievna, mentored and taught her, because she was not a professional writer. And later, in her memoirs, Dmitrieva wrote that she was grateful to many of this extraordinary woman.
In 1886, the writer moved to Moscow and took an active part in the protest movement. For this she was sent to Tver without the right to live in the capital.
After some time, Dmitrieva got a job in the city of Nizhnedevitsk, Voronezh province. There her works "Spring Illusions" and "Gomochka" (1894) were published. They were read and passed from hand to hand by all the advanced young people.
She was often sent to the centers of epidemics of the most dangerous infectious diseases, and she described all her experiences in her essays. So, in 1896 she published an essay “Through the villages. From the doctor's notes”. She had a lot of work, but she also had a craving for writing. During her tenure as a doctor, her most famous works were written, some were even published illegally.
Dmitrieva described the life of different strata of society: peasants, rural intelligentsia, workers. She was worried about the situation of the people, and in 1900 she finished her novel "Chervonny Khutor", which was published in one of the literary almanacs. The novel raised important issues of that era.
At the beginning of nineteen hundred, she went abroad, and there she published propaganda books "For Faith, Tsar and Fatherland" and "Lipochka-Popovna". She wrote them under different names. Both publications were illegally transported to Russia, and there they were read by all the progressive people of that time.
Personal life
Valentina Iovna was married to Vladimir Arkadyevich Ershov, a Russian revolutionary. They got married and lived together in Voronezh, although Valentina's husband was often arrested and interrogated, he often served time in prison for revolutionary propaganda.
There were always a lot of people in their house: writers, musicians, representatives of the progressive intelligentsia.
