Balandina, Vera Arsenievna

Vera Arsenyeva Emelyanova was born into a merchant family in the village of Novosyolovo of the Minusinsk district of the Yenisei province (Due to the construction of the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric station, the village was in the flood zone. Therefore, it was moved up the relief. Now it is the Novosyolovsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory ).

In 1887, she graduated from the course of the eight-grade Krasnoyarsk girls' gymnasium with a gold medal. In 1889, she entered the Higher Women's Courses in St. Petersburg , where she graduated from the Physics and Chemistry Department in 1893. Student work: "Gold, its origin and mining in the Yenisei taiga", "Flora of Russia" . During her studies, she met N. M. Yadrintsev and G. N. Potanin .

On September 1, 1893, her wedding took place with Alexander Alekseevich Balandin .

In the years 1893-1894 Vera Arsenievna Balandina listened to lectures at the Sorbonne and at the same time worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris with Professor Karl Greb .

In Paris , in addition to chemistry, she studies painting , literature and librarianship , meets the writer Evgenia Ivanovna Konradi , the author of the books “Confession of the Mother”, “Public Tasks of Home Education”, “Book for Mothers” ^[1] , which was in the 1860s editor of the newspaper "Week".

In 1895, Balandina came to the city of Yeniseisk with a scientific degree of Master of Science, where he began work on the reprint of the works of E.I. Konradi. The publication was prepared by M. A. Antonovich . After the death of Eugenia Conradi in Paris in 1898, a year and a half later, Balandina publishes a two-volume edition of her works. The Ministry of Education recommended the publication for fundamental libraries, teacher training institutes and seminaries, for all libraries of secondary schools in Russia.

In 1895, Balandina founded a Sunday free school for girls in Yeniseisk.

In 1897, 90 km from Yeniseisk, along the Melnichka River, which flows into the Yenisei, Balandina discovered the first diamond in Eastern Siberia, examined by Professor S.F. Glinka , for which she was elected a lifetime full member of the Mineralogical Society at St. Petersburg University .

In 1898, Alexei Sofronovich Balandin , the father of her husband, died. According to the will, Balandin left all the capital to his daughters, the second family who lived with him in St. Petersburg , and his only son, husband Balandina, was all affairs in the Yenisei district . With the money received as an inheritance, Balandina establishes a scholarship in St. Petersburg for students of the Bestuzhev courses born in Siberia . Together with her husband, he allocates 50 thousand rubles for the construction of a free public reading room named after A.S. Balandin, which opened in Yeniseisk on August 6, 1898.

On April 12, 1898, in the new stone building built by the Balandina, the primary women's school and the private Balandins' library were opened . The reason for creating a private library was that the Ministry of Education forbade free libraries to write out and keep many publications. The main visitors to the free libraries were children. Balandina sends books to school libraries, gives lectures. He regularly donates money for a two-class rural school in Novosyolovo, a one-class rural school in the Big Khabyk of the Novosyolovo volost .

On December 20, 1898, the son Alexei , the future academician, was born into the Balandins family.

In the winter of 1899-1900, Balandina attended a course at École de Chimie at the University of Geneva .

On December 27, 1902, the Balandins opened the first cheap canteen for the poor in the Yenisei province .

In the same year, Balandina opens a nursery "Nurseries" in the village Novosyolovo - the first in the Yenisei province. Initially, the "Nursery" existed as a summer day shelter. From 1902 to 1903 they were housed in her grandfather’s house, and in 1904, in her father’s house. Thirty children visited them. Their parents were engaged in their own cultivation, some lived in day work, and a small part of them were settlers day laborers . By age, most children were from 1 month to a year. The overseer was A.A. Iordanskaya.

In 1902, Balandina also founded a private school in the village of Ust-Syda, Abakan volost, and built a meteorological station in Minusinsk .

In 1902, the Balandins settled under the mountain Unyuk in Minusinsk district . The village was named Balandino (in Soviet times it was renamed Unyuk ). The Balandins built a five-story mill here, located on the terrace of the right bank of the river. She was one of the county’s largest flour mills. The Balandins built spacious granaries, from where grain and flour were sent to Krasnoyarsk and Minusinsk by barges along the Yenisei. A credit company was opened. With the direct participation of Vera Balandina, a garden was established where, in addition to local trees, trees from other regions, including Chinese apple trees and cherries, grew. In this garden, she conducted experiments on the acclimatization of unique varieties of flowers from Europe. Unyuk was the first village in the volost, which began to be lit by electricity. Balandina had an experimental field here, was engaged in the study of wheat. Samples of its seeds were sown in the fields by local peasants. The steppe open spaces allowed the Balandins to conduct herd horse breeding.

In 1903, in Krasnoyarsk, Balandina published a brochure "On the issue of credit for the rural population of the Yenisei province." In total, about 50 works on the development of the Yenisei province were published.

February 19, 1904 a chemical laboratory burned out at a plant near the village of Abakansky . Were destroyed expensive reagents, scales, instruments purchased in Germany at the direction of Geneva Professor Grebe, valuable chemical books in German, French and Russian, the chemical dictionary of Wortz, German chemical journals, filings of the journal of the Russian Physicochemical Society at St. Petersburg University from the foundation magazine. All records burned while working in laboratories at the Higher Women's Courses in St. Petersburg and in the Ecole de Chimie in Geneva burned out, detailed data on the chemical analysis of the healing water of Lake Plodbischensky burnt out 17 versts from the city of Yeniseisk . Balandina wanted to bequeath all these studies to the Minusinsk Museum . Balandina decided to build not a wooden, but a stone two-class school in Novosyolovo, and also combine in one stone building a dormitory for the school and the "Nursery" so that they work all year round.

During the 1905 Revolution, Balandina composed and edited the texts of the petitions - on March 28, 1905 from the Society for the Primary Education of the city of Krasnoyarsk, and on April 5 - from the Society for the Primary Education of the city of Yeniseysk . The main requirement of the petition is freedom of speech . After signing the petitions, they began to suspect Balandin of political unreliability. In response, Balandina handed over to the Society for the primary education of the city of Yeniseisk a gymnasium building and a public reading room together with a capital of 60 thousand rubles.

In 1907, Balandina began coal mining in the town of Karatigey - now it is the city of Chernogorsk . A narrow gauge railway was built to the marina on the Yenisei. Coal was transported by river.

On September 18, 1907, the Yenisei Society for the Care of Primary Education closes on charges of distributing illegal literature. Due to lack of funding, schools are starting to close. Balandina is being watched, an arrest is being prepared. At this time, his son became seriously ill, and Balandina takes him to France for treatment.

In 1908, the family moved to Moscow to educate children. Every summer the family spends in Yeniseisk.

In 1911, Balandina began a project for the construction of the Achinsk - Minusinsk railway. On October 29, 1912, the government approved the Charter of the Achinsk-Minusinsk Railway (Achmindor Joint-Stock Company). Balandina organized financing - about 35 million rubles. The right to build a road with a length of 450 miles was obtained by a consortium of Petrograd banks. But because of the First World War, the construction of the road could not be completed. On January 1, 1916, traffic began on the Achinsk - Adadym stretch, with a length of 50 miles. The construction of the road was completed only in 1925.

In 1919, after the death of her husband, Balandin moved with his children to Tomsk , where in 1920-1922 he worked as a chemist at the Siberian Scientific Medical Council. In 1922, she leaves with her children, her son Alexei and daughter Vivea, to Moscow, where they were both admitted to Moscow State University . In Moscow, she works as a senior researcher of the 1st category and runs the library of the State Colonization Research Institute, which is managed by Glavnauk.

In 1927, Balandina continued to study ethereal grasses near Minusinsk, in the area of ​​the current village of Podsinego and the mouth of the Abakan River , organizing the Kulturny experimental test plot. In 1930, this site was transferred to the Minusinsk experimental field.

The exact date of death of V. A. Balandina has not yet been documented: 1943 or 1945. According to her granddaughter, Nina Alekseevna, Balandina died on November 3, 1943. ^[2] . She was buried in Kazan .

• father - Arseny Ivanovich Emelyanov.
• mother - Alexandra Mikhailovna Emelyanova (Matonina) (1850-1884).
• cousin grandfather - Averyan Kosmich Matonin - a merchant, a gold miner. Donated 100 thousand rubles for the construction of a gymnasium in Yeniseisk (1872). In the village of Kekursky in the Nakhval volost of the Krasnoyarsk district, a vocational school was named after A.K. Matonin.
• Grandfather - Mikhail Kosmich Matonin.
• sister - Maria Arsenievna Emelyanova
• Father-in-law - Alexei Sofronovich Balandin (1823-1896).
• husband - Alexander Alekseevich Balandin (1857-1919).
• son - Alexei Alexandrovich Balandin (1898-1967).
• daughter - Vivea Alexandrovna Balandina (1902-1970).

• “For works on public education” (for wearing on the chest) (1905).
• Honorary and lifetime member of the Society for the delivery of funds to the Higher Women's Courses in St. Petersburg.

• In 2008, a monument to Vera Balandina as the founder of the city was erected in the city of Chernogorsk . Sculptor - K. M. Zinich .
• Balandina became the prototype of Nina Kupriyanova in the novel by V. Ya. Shishkov “The Gloomy River” .

• Aferenko V. A. Mysteries of the Matonin family and the book by V. Ya. Shishkov “The Gloomy River”. // Polygraphist. Zheleznogorsk, 1999
• Local history reading them. V.A. Balandina (8; 2009; Chernogorsk)
• Alexey Alexandrovich Balandin: Essays. Memories. Materials / Ans. ed. V. M. Gryaznov. - Moscow: Nauka, 1995 .-- 302 p. - (Scientists of Russia: essays, memoirs, materials). - ISBN 5-02-001855-4 : B. c.

• The dynasty of the Balandins. The newspaper Krasnoyarsk Worker December 27, 2002.
• Balandina Vera Arsenievna.