Wars bring drastic changes to people's lives. So the First World War changed the life of A. A. Zhdanova, who at the call of her heart became a sister of mercy and then was a driver for more than a dozen years. The girl described her life and the life of her people in difficult years in her diaries, which were published in 2014 for the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War.
Biography
In 1892, in Sergiev Posad, Moscow Region, another daughter, Anna, was born to the Zhdanov family. Zhdanov's husband and wife gave four children home education. In 1910-1913, Anna Alexandrovna studied at the Tver women's gymnasium.
Sister of Mercy
Anna Zhdanova was not preoccupied with her career. During the First World War, she sincerely wanted to serve Russia. The girl graduated from courses at the zemstvo hospital and began working in the soldiers' infirmary.
While on duty, Anna bandaged the wounded and helped to receive the fighters. She and her sister Elena talked with the soldiers about the war, played fortune-telling cards, checkers, argued about the benefits and necessity of the intelligentsia, and even organized choral singing. The girl was a great inventor, a mischievous woman. Once Anna and Elena took the wounded man by the arms, surrounded him with a ring and began to dance around him. Laughter and noise all around. Another, a third, got into the ring … They wanted to break free, but they didn’t have enough strength to laugh.
Be useful
The life position of Anna Zhdanova was active. She aspired to get into the active army. According to Anna, it was impossible to live the same way as in peacetime - to walk, dress up, sit back. She believed that every person at that time should have been aware of a terrible grief. The girl wanted so much to be useful that she could not wait. Anna confessed in her diary that many called their plan insanity and answered herself: "… why are we to blame … that we were not born men …" She bought boots and a hat and sewed an overcoat.
Female driver, female engineer
In 1916-1918, together with her sister Elena, she was accepted as a driver in an ambulance convoy. Once during a battle, women were covered with earth from an explosion. Then the orderlies noticed them. Anna recovered and returned to active life.
After graduating from the Moscow Highway Institute, A. Zhdanova worked as an engineer at a car plant, in the 50s - in the publishing house "Pravda".
Personal life
In her youth, Anna Zhdanova's personal life was full of mutual sympathy. One of the soldiers who was in love with her is Mikhail Zenov. His letters are touching and naive. In them, he asked her to take an oath of allegiance. In her diary, Anna wrote that she was not a lady of the Middle Ages to take such an oath. One of the wounded, Andrei Maslikov, also aroused sympathy in her.
Zachary Leitash … Anna called him "the wounded swallow."
His lung was pierced through by a bullet. And he laughed and said: "Nothing." The sister of mercy sympathized with him so much that she even wanted to change places with him and wrote in her diary that she would give everything, as long as he lived.
The famous woman was left without a family. She died in 1974.
The memory lives on
In 2014, her diaries were published, in which she reflected the most difficult period in the life of our country. For the valiant work during the Great Patriotic War and in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of V. I. Lenin A. A. Zhdanova was awarded medals.
