Zhakova, Vera Nikolaevna

Vera Nikolaevna Zhakova (August 6 (19), 1914, the village of Nikulino, Simbirsk province (now the Ulyanovsk region ) - March 13, 1937, the city of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod )) is a writer. She corresponded with A. M. Gorky .

She was born in the family of lawyer Nikolai Nikolaevich and teacher Ekaterina Alekseevna Zhakov. In 1923, after numerous relocations, the Zhakovs moved to Blagoveshchensk-on-Amur , where young Vera went to school. The talent of the future writer began to manifest itself in childhood. Possessing a phenomenal memory, already at the age of seven she knew by heart some of the tales and poems of Pushkin , Bunin , Nikitin , Koltsov and others. In August 1928, the fourteen-year-old Vera decided on a bold act - she sent her verses to A. Gorky in Italy , in Sorrento . And a few months later she received an answer. In the letter, Aleksey Maksimovich frankly called her poems “very bad”, but asked her not to despair and continue to write because at her age “ Lermontov and many other wonderful poets also wrote nasty poems.”

In the summer of 1930, Vera graduated from high school and went to Moscow . At that time, she was sixteen, which means that there was no question of entering the institute. Not wanting to lose two years, she joined the circle of Marxist-dialecticians at the V.I. Lenin All-Union Library . Vera plunged headlong into work, visited metropolitan museums, temples, palaces, and was especially often at the Museum of Fine Arts , so beloved to her, where an energetic and well-read girl was soon noticed and sent to a museum university.

Young Vera met Gorky on May 13, 1931, immediately after the return of the famous writer to the Soviet Union . In the same year she entered the publishing and publishing institute. Studying and active social activities did not stop her from seriously studying history. It was then that Vera decided to write about the so-called "black people", talents lost in the strata of centuries - mechanics Ivan Kulibin , court singer Maxim Berezovsky and others.

In the fall of 1935, on behalf of Alexei Maksimovich Zhakov, she went to the city of Gorky to study the history of the region, and after the death of the writer in June 1936, she plunged into work even more. In less than a year, the novel “The Stupin School”, the stories “The Life and Miracles of the holy fool Yelena Yagunova ascetic of the Trinity Monastery” and “City of Kitezh” were written. By that time, Vera's health was already severely undermined, but she did not want to hear about the rest. “Now, after the death of Alexei Maximovich, every minute lost is a crime, if not an insult to his memory,” she repeated.

Vera Zhakova died on March 13, 1937 from heart failure. She was only 22 years old.

The monument at the grave of Vera Zhakova at the Bugrovsky cemetery was erected in 2011 at the expense of Nikolai Morokhin and Dmitry Pavlov.