Novikova-Vashentseva, Elena Mikhailovna

She was born on May 20 (June 1), 1860, in the village of Uspensky, Bunkovo ​​volost, Moscow province (now the village of Uspensky is part of the city of Noginsk ).

Her mother was a serfwoman of the landowner Rakhmanova, her father worked as a locksmith in one of Morozov's factories.

From the age of 12, she worked at the Morozov spinning factory of the Bogorodsk-Glukhovskaya manufactory in the winder “hauler” - she dragged bales of yarn and heavy iron boxes with spools.

At 17, she was married, gave birth to ten children of which five survived.

In 1913, at 53 years old, not having endured the abuses of her drinking husband and hopeless need, she left home.

During the Revolution of 1905, she helped her son in revolutionary work.

The revolution of 1917 found her in Ukraine, in 1923 she came to Moscow and went to work at customs, where she was elected a delegate of the women's department. In 1920 she joined the CPSU (b) .

Until the age of 50, she was illiterate, "barely reading." Her writing began with a note in a wall newspaper, then several Rabkorov’s notes in newspapers followed.

In 1925, she joined the All-Russian Society of Peasant Writers , which helped her in self-education.

She began to be published in the magazines “ Delegate ”, “ Worker ” and “ Peasant ”, then the stories “How Aunt Daria found out about MOPR”, “Delegate Anna”, “Where the Tsars lived”, etc. were published.

In 1928, in the newspaper "Evening Moscow" Maxim Gorky posted an article about the writer:

Alyonushka Novikova, before 17, fifty-eight years old lived an “ordinary”, painfully heavy, soul-killing life of a Russian peasant woman, a Russian worker. Millions of women, such as she, having fertilized the earth with her labor and her children, went to the graves, leaving only sad songs about her evil share, about a ruined life without love, without joy. When the old Countess Kleinmichel writes her memoirs of how the Bolsheviks offended her, the Countess is led by a desire to reckon with enemies. She, the countess, is easy to write, she is an educated man, armed with many excellent words. Alyonushka Novikova is illiterate, and it’s harder to work with a pen than an ax. She writes not in order to reckon with the past, but in order to tell how good the present is.

- M. Gorky - About Elena Novikova // Newspaper “Evening Moscow”, 1928, issue 162 from July 14.

In the 1930s, at the age of 65, she began her main work, the autobiographical story Marinkina Life. She worked on the story for five years. Maxim Gorky got acquainted with the manuscript, helped her in her work: he made corrections in the manuscript, gave directions, wrote a preface to the story. The story in three books was published in 1930-1934.

In 1934 she was invited to the First Congress of Soviet Writers , admitted to the USSR Writers Union.

She died on December 19, 1953 in Bogorodsk.

Bibliography

• How Aunt Daria learned about Mopre / Series “Library of a Worker and a Peasant Woman” - Moscow: State Publishing House, 1926 - 30 p.
• Shura, a homeless child / Illustrations: V. Saychuk; Cheap library. For children of middle and young age - Moscow: State Publishing House, 1927 - 16 p.
• Yashka- "Berlin" homeless / New Children's Library. Middle and older age - Moscow: State Publishing House, 1928 - 55 p.
• Lizaveta at the resort - Moscow: State Publishing House, 1928 - 28 p.
• Delegate Anna / Series “Library of a Worker and a Peasant Woman” - Moscow: State Publishing House, 1928 - 24 p.
• Earthquakes - Moscow: State Publishing House (1st Model Printing House), 1928 - 23 p.
• Where the kings lived: the story of the shepherdess - M .: Education worker, type. “The spark of revolution”, 1930 - 38 p. (circulation of 20,000 copies)
• Marinkina life: a story in three parts:
  • Marinkina life: A Tale - M. L.: Land and Factory, 8th printing house "Mospoligraf", 1930
  • Marinkina life: A Tale - M .: GIHL, factory of the book “Red Proletariat”, 1933
  • Marinkina life: A Tale - M.L .: GIHL, printing house "Printing House" in Leningrad, 1934
• How I became a writer: a story of an old worker. - Moscow: Profizdat, 1938 - 48 p.
• Native and close (About M. Gorky) // "Proceedings of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee", 1938, No 73, March 28
• Marinkina life: A Story in 3 books / Preface. M. Gorky; open ed. R.A. Kovnator - Moscow: Goslitizdat, 1939 - 460 p. (circulation 10,000 copies)

Autobiographical novel “Marinkina Life”

Maxim Gorky, saying that “the book is not written well enough from the point of view of literary art ”, emphasized that this book is a 65-year-old, half-century-old illiterate woman, and noted that the fact of the appearance of such a book is significant:

Dumb before the October Revolution, women, peasant women and workers, themselves begin to speak in their own words about the past. They write books, and these books have the meaning of historical documents. These are precisely the books of Elena Novikova, Galina Grekova, Agrippina Korevanova — autobiographies written so that young people would know how “ people doomed to death ” lived before the October proletarian revolution.

- Maxim Gorky - Book of a Russian Woman / Newspaper Pravda No. 154 for June 6, 1936 ^[1]

Immediately after the release of Literary Newspaper in 1933, the autobiographical novel was assigned to the genre of the historical novel “ saturated with historical facts ”. ^[2]

Framed by a simple plot, the image of the girl of Marinka gradually grows in front of the reader. daughters of a factory worker. An extremely simple, artless, but figurative language, approaching in places the tale form, is narrated by the writer about the distant and difficult days of the Russian proletariat. ... In the story, all the ugliness of the social environment, the poverty of the proletariat of the past century are convex and vividly exposed.

- The magazine " New World ", 1966 ^[3]

You turn over the pages of the story “Marinkina Life”, which has already become a bibliographic rarity, and think that the work of Alyonushka Pisaki is undeservedly forgotten today. And it can remind a lot of people of the older generation, tell a lot about youth. It seems that on the shelves you can still see a volume of selected works by Elena Novikova-Vashentsova.

- In the world of books, 1967 ^[4]

• Novikova-Vashentseva, Elena Mikhailovna , Brief Literary Encyclopedia
• M. Gorky - About Elena Novikova // Newspaper “Evening Moscow”, 1928, issue 162 from July 14.
• M. Gorky - Preface to the book by E. Novikova-Vashentseva “Marinkina Life” , 1931
• A. Wolf - A wonderful fact // The Siberian Lights Journal No. 4 for 1931 - pp. 107-108
• A. Garin - The Truth of Life // Journal “What to Read” No. 2 for 1937
• E. Andrianov - The author of the story is an employee from Glukhovka // The Banner of Communism newspaper, December 13, 1962, p. 4
• E. Kogan - Unconquered (about EM Novikova-Vashentseva) // Magazine "Worker" No. 10 for 1962
• “Marinkina life” by E. M. Novikova-Vashentsova and the old Orekhovo-Zuevo // Interdistrict newspaper “Banner of Ilyich”, November 29, 1962