Nanny Pushkina Arina Rodionovna ... This name of a simple Russian woman is as widely known throughout Russia as the name of her brilliant pet. Pushkin listened to tales and sayings, “traditions of the deep antiquity” and songs more than once - and forever remembered. Serving the Mikhailovsky exile,

Au Pair is an international program that sends young people to work, in fact, as governesses or nannies: participants go to another country to help a strange family raise children and perform small household chores. In return, the family provides them with housing, food and pocket money - au pair work is usually not very well paid, but many participate in order to learn a language and live in another country. We talked to Elena Ershova, who worked as an au pair in France, and she talked about naughty children, hospitable families and why life in Paris wasn't as rosy as she imagined.

Before moving to France, I organized cultural events in Russia: photo exhibitions, concerts, festivals, city holidays. I can’t say that I didn’t like my work - rather, I wanted to go international, work in a foreign company or project, and just live in another country.

A good moment came in the fall of 2015, when I completed all the current projects and did not know at all what to do next. By that time, I was already learning French, but I could not advance beyond a certain level - there was no one to regularly communicate in the language with anyone. And then I remembered that a friend from Strasbourg told me about the au pair student program, with which you can move to Europe and whole year to live in a family, taking care of children - that is, to be a governess. I had little experience working with children at events, and I also helped raise a little niece, so I decided to give it a try. It seemed that this was a unique chance - to get into the family, to see with my own eyes how both the culture and the language of the nation are being formed.

How to get into a Parisian family

No one from my environment participated in such programs, so I was in complete ignorance. I started with the simplest: I typed in the name of the program in a search engine and began to study thematic forums and sites. Finally found convenient portal, which has been around for many years and really works. You create a profile there and you can view the profiles of families who are looking for governesses for their children.

At first, I considered only families from Paris, because I love megacities and an active city ​​life. But it soon became clear that few people were interested in such things in Paris - so the geography of my searches expanded first to the suburbs of the capital, and then I began to argue that it would be nice to live on the Cote d'Azur, and in Strasbourg, and even Lyon a good city. The second point that I paid attention to when searching was the number of children and age. I set myself the condition that there should be no more than two of them and they should be older than three or four years, so that I do not have to worry about diapers and difficult feeding.

But my own location played with me bad joke. The main obstacle was that I am from Russia. The Au Pair program has existed in Europe for almost fifty years, and Europeans, of course, do not need a visa: they simply conclude an agreement with their family and register upon arrival in France. I needed a special visa and a whole package of documents, including from the family: an agreement signed by both parties, motivation letters, a medical certificate, and much more. This is a complex bureaucratic procedure that takes a lot of time - most families were simply not ready to deal with it. They told me that they liked me more than other applicants, but as soon as it came to documents, nannies from Europe were preferred.

As a result, the process of finding a family and paperwork took me three whole months. When I received so many refusals due to a visa, I began to actively write to families who were looking for Russian-speaking girls. And this is where I got lucky. One of my messages was answered by Eleanor, a mother of two from Paris. We met her and her husband Philip when they arrived in Moscow and liked each other. They took my documents along with the signed contract, endorsed them in France and sent them to me. Immediately after the New Year, I received a special student visa and flew to Paris.

Life in France

I got into unique family, who was not just interested in Russia, but adored her, and not in the first generation. The family had two children - a girl of three and a half years and a boy of five - who went to preparatory classes for preschoolers and taught there three languages: French, English and Russian. One of the conditions of my stay was that I should only speak Russian to the children in order to help them learn it.

I remember very well that I flew to Paris on Saturday. I had only one free day that I spent with my family, and that's it - already on Monday I had to turn on the work mode. Eleanor, the mother of the family, helped me collect and take the children to school in the morning - the whole afternoon was on me. I had to pick up the children from school, feed, do homework, spend time with them before going to bed - in general, start making friends and chatting. From the very beginning, the children did not let me relax: on the very first day they started playing catch-up at home, screaming and completely ignoring my comments. It was hard work, and it took me a long time to gain credibility and learn how to stop their disobedience.

The rest received me incredibly warmly and cordially. Even at the first Skype interview, Eleanor warned me that they need not just an employee, but a person who will become a family member and want to spend time with them. free time: ride in country houses, participate in general gatherings and walks on weekends. I didn’t feel like a stranger at all - we spent all our free time together: evenings in the kitchen with a glass of wine, trips out of town on weekends, dinners and lunches with family and their friends and acquaintances. One day the children's grandmother - one of the most famous judges in France - took me to the Palace of Justice, where you can't just go. I also happened to attend a dinner to which ambassadors from different countries were invited, including from the Vatican. I really became part of the family, and even when I made friends in Paris, I often preferred family events to going to a club or disco.

I also had a lot of free time. I spent about two hours with the children in the morning, when I woke them up, fed them, dressed them, and took them to school. From half past nine to four in the afternoon I was absolutely free. At first, I had to take compulsory French courses, but when they ended, I most The day was left to itself. In the afternoon - from four to nine - I was again with the children: we did homework, walked, often they played with each other, and I could do my own thing. After nine in the evening I was free and could spend time with family or friends.

About once a month I tried to travel from Paris to other cities in France. Since the family took on the costs of accommodation, food, travel around the city and insurance, my salary of four hundred euros was enough for everyday life with museums, coffee and croissants, and on trips around the country. By the way, this is very important point for everyone who is going to travel to Europe under the Au Pair program: carefully discuss all financial matters with the family - not only the monthly fixed payment, but also additional expenses Otherwise, you may encounter unexpected expenses. For example, I myself paid for the required French courses, although I later found out that the family had to do this.

Ability to negotiate and compromise important qualities for such work. You need to understand that when you come to a strange family, surprises can await you: the rules of family life, and their behavior, and character. Even my wonderful family had clear, long-established rules of life, to which I had to adapt. For example, due to the fact that electricity, gas and water in France are many times more expensive than in Russia, the family could not wash their clothes separately in washing machine. I was told that one of the previous nannies did this all the time and threw literally a few things into the washing machine, as we used to do in Russia - at the end of the month the family received an electricity bill twice as much as usual. Heating in France is also very expensive. In fact, low-income families sometimes do not turn it on at all for the winter, although it is cold in the apartments. But even if you are allowed to adjust the temperature and turn the heating tap, unfortunately, you can turn it not on maximum value, but only half - you will be more or less comfortable, but you will not spend the entire family budget.

It was also unusual for me that people go home in what they came from the street. I did not understand how you can walk across the carpet, into the kitchen, into the bathroom in boots or a jacket. My French family laughed and told me that I was not the first Russian nanny who was trying to teach children to take off their shoes in the hallway instead of running straight to the kitchen in their shoes and climbing onto the sofa with their feet. But I still stubbornly forced the children to change their shoes. Parents chuckled, but treated it absolutely calmly.

One's own among strangers

I did not have an adaptation period, I immediately felt in my city, in my house, among my people and enjoyed this feeling from the first day. The crisis moment happened about five months later, when I began to learn more about the social and economic life of the country, about the problems of migration. It turned out that in France, too, there are issues that have not yet been resolved and that require a lot of effort and time to clarify.

For example, it was hard for me to come to terms with the attitude of people to the cleanliness of the city - Paris seemed to me very dirty; in this regard, Moscow can be considered an example of cleanliness and order. There are a lot of homeless people on the streets, and in the subway they can stick to you and start obsessively demanding money or food. I was surprised that many things in France are not organized as modern as in Russia. For example, the banking system is very bureaucratic, slow and unfriendly towards the client. Change the card from which the subscription fee is charged for mobile phone, is the whole story.

All this annoyed me and caused disappointment - I could not accept these realities. french life and decided that I didn’t want to stay here longer than the prescribed year: it seemed that in Russia it wasn’t so bad, and all our problems were at least familiar and understandable. But, as often happens, time passed, and I realized that I love the country, the city, and the people, and I am ready to live and join this culture. Despite all the prejudices and stories that the French treat people of other nationalities and cultures badly, this is not entirely true. If you are a person of another nation, but love French culture, language, want to become your own and demonstrate it, this is very much appreciated. Although, for example, in a cafe, if you speak French poorly, you can be interrupted with an arrogant look and switch to English. This also occurs.

Future plans

According to the rules of the program, you can participate in it only twice, that is, you can work as a nanny in the country for two years. When my first year was coming to an end, my family invited me to stay, but I refused. First, I want professional development and career achievements. I understood that I could no longer afford the second year of such a life - it was time to use what I had accumulated and received. And secondly, I was too tired of the children with whom I studied, so at the end of the contract I returned to Russia.

For several months now I have been living at home, but this has not changed my decision to go to live and work abroad, to gain international experience, to actively use French, which has become my native language. I recently applied for competitive program to study in France, according to which it will be possible to work. In the middle of summer I will receive an answer. If everything works out, then I will leave, as I planned, if not, I will continue to look for new opportunities.

The publishing house "Nikeya" published a collection of memoirs "Nanny. Who nursed the Russian geniuses"

Text: Natalia Sokolova/RG
Excerpt and book cover courtesy of Nikea Publishing House

Russian nanny - for us, this is the famous "Arina Rodionovna", the nanny of Alexander Sergeevich. Many Russian people had such nannies, but nothing was known about them until recently. The idea of ​​a collection of memoirs about nannies belongs to a teacher, theologian, writer and poet Sergei Durylin. In the first half of the 20th century, he began to search for materials, an impressive folder was collected, which, thanks to descendants, has survived to this day, but Sergei Nikolayevich did not have time to finish his plan. "Russian nanny in religious, moral, aesthetic development Russian man was incomparably more important than hundreds of all sorts of teachers, publicists, educators, preachers, etc., Durylin wrote, ... Russian science and history can be bitterly reproached for not paying any attention to the historical feat of the Russian nanny, while Russian poetry and fiction, among the few positive images, preserved and exalted precisely the image of the Russian nanny.
Why, after many years, did the Nikea publishing house decide to turn to this project? The phenomenon of a nanny in that patriarchal, "Pushkin" sense no longer exists. The nanny has now moved into the category of housekeepers and servants who perform an applied function - to sit with the child while mom and dad are busy with work and chores. The more interesting it is to remember the past and maybe even learn something from the good nannies of the past, these guardian angels.

The book "Nanny. Who Nursed Russian Geniuses” debunks the myth that the nannies were dense.

Despite the lack of proper education, they carried invaluable experience of peasant wisdom, had a sense of humor and special dignity. They were a source of warmth and love with which a child should be surrounded from birth. “Nanny and uncle should be given a place of honor in the history of Russian literature, - wrote another well-known publicist. — In their moral impact on their pets, one should, at least in part, look for explanations of how at the end of the last and the first half of this century, in our society cut off from the people, in this environment, boastfully renouncing Russian historical and spiritual traditions, sometimes, inaudibly and imperceptibly, streams of the purest national spirit.
The materials included in the book lay in the archives for a very long time. book compiler Victoria Toropova, author of Durylin's biography, lived in Durylin's house in Bolshevo in the 60s of the last century. The writer's widow, Irina Alekseevna, handed over a folder with collected material and asked to prepare it for publication, and, if possible, publish it, supplementing it with other materials about the nannies, which were not in Durylin's archive.
More than half of the memoirs are not known to the general reader, they have never been published. List of names whose memories are collected in the book in chronological order, is impressive: Sergei Durylin himself, of course, Nikolai Pirogov, Yakov Polonsky, Sergei M. Solovyov, Fyodor and Andrei Dostoevsky, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Modest Mussorgsky, Vasily and Alexander Vereshchagin, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, and even Vera Figner and Peter Schumacher. Childhood memories from representatives noble families, philistine and merchant. "The book contains different genres: memoirs, small testimonies, poems,- talking about the collection literary critic Nikolai Alexandrov. — All this wonderful world with its own merits and demerits.

Despite the different origins of the people whose memoirs are published in the book, the nature of the nanny is unchanged.

The typology is immediately recognizable and readable. The nannies were not equal in their own way social background, they differed somewhat in the degree of education, but this was not the main thing. Uncles and nannies - this is what made up the world of the child. They were bearers of a special sincerity, religiosity, combined with superstitions and everyday paganism, selfless devotion. The nanny did not come and go, she constantly lived in the family, she was a member of the family, she had separate room She was mistress in the nursery. Durylin has memories that his parents did not even go into the nursery. The nanny laid the foundations - what is good, what is bad, what is love and dislike. This world cannot be restored. The only thing we can do is preserve the memories of him and tell our children about this experience.”

The publishers argued for a very long time whether or not to include in the collection the memoirs of the famous terrorist Vera Figner, who made several attempts to kill Alexander II.

As a result, the book included her memories of the nanny and a letter to the sisters from the Shlisselburg fortress, dated 9th of March 1904. Once in prison - she spent twenty years in solitary confinement - Figner wrote memoirs. AND important place they are occupied with memories of the nanny, who, in contrast to her father, in a family with eight children, was a source of warmth and virtue. “Nanny in the first ten years of our life was the only creature with whom we felt free and who did not break us; she alone loved and caressed us as best she could and as best she could, and she alone we could love and caress without embarrassment, Vera Figner recalled. — In the family we were kept strictly, even very strictly: my father was quick-tempered, harsh and despotic ... Mother was kind, meek, but mute. She could neither caress, nor pamper, nor even protect us before her father and did not dare, and unconditional obedience and overwhelming discipline were her father's motto.

The Year of Literature portal cites an excerpt from the book Nanny. Who nursed Russian geniuses?

"Nanny. Who nursed Russian geniuses?

M., "Nicaea", editorial office "Meeting", 2017

Nikolai Pirogov

Another feature that testified to my childish naivete at that time was my attachment to my old nurse. This remarkable person for me was called Katerina Mikhailovna; a soldier's widow from the serfs, who lost her husband early and entered our house while still young, she remained our household person for more than 30 years, although she did not live with us all this time; grieved with us and rejoiced in our joys. I retained my affection, or rather, love for her until my departure from Moscow for Dorpat.

I saw her and then two more times; but in last years she began to hurt a lot; and before this kindest being out of grief and joy, she sometimes resorted to a glass, but already one glass of wine now squeezed tears from her eyes. "Mikhailovna bursts into tears" - this meant that Mikhailovna, out of grief and joy, drank a glass. We - both children and adults - knew all this and, knowing it, sometimes wept with her, not knowing what. The whole being of this woman was saturated through and through with love for us, the children she nursed.
I never heard a single swear word from her; she always lovingly and affectionately stopped stubbornness and mischief; her morality was the simplest and always touching, because she came out of loving soul. “God does not command to do this, do not do this, it is a sin!” - and nothing more.
I remember, however, that she also drew my attention to nature, finding in it moral motives. I remember how now, Assumption Day, the temple feast in the Androniev (correctly: Andronikov. - V.T.) monastery; a monastery and tents with a drunken, noisy people, spread out on a green hillock, in front of me, as if on a saucer, and above the heads of the crowd - a black thundercloud; lightning flashes, thunder rumbles. I am with the nanny at the open window and look from above. “Here, look,” I hear, she says, “the people are making noise, rowdy and do not hear how God threatens; here there is noise and human merriment, but there, above, God has his own.

This simple indication of the contrast between heaven and earth, made, by the way, by a loving soul, is imprinted forever and every time somehow mournfully sets me up when I meet a thunderstorm on a walk. My poor nurse, as often happens with sensitive people, ordinary people, began to drink and, not enduring much wine, became ill, and so that she was about to die; I don’t know why, but it was decided to put in a flush; I was then already a student and for the first time in my life performed this operation on my nurse; she was surprised at my skill and after the surprise immediately announced: "Well, now I will recover." In three days she really got out of bed and lived for several more years; she might have lived longer if, to her misfortune, she had not hired herself from Avdotya Yegorovna Dragutina, the young wife of an elderly merchant husband. They had a son, Yegorinka; they took my nanny to him, and through the nanny our family met the Dragutins.
Oh tempora, oh mores! Cicero, whom I did not read then, seems to be always and everywhere by the way.
Zamoskvorechye; a pretty, cheerful, nicely furnished apartment on the second floor.
Hostess, 25 years old, beautiful, always dressed up brunette with a claim to the intelligentsia, with a noticeable and for me, a teenager, penchant for male gender, from early morning until night, alone with her little son, nanny and teacher, university candidate, a tall and prominent man, Putilov. The husband, gloomy, somewhat reminiscent of a bear, however, not from the ordinary and respectable in all respects, the whole day in the shop, in gostiny dvor; the house is like a full bowl; tea is drunk five times a day, by the way and inopportunely.
The husband, coming home late, tired, goes straight to his room, drinks tea, has supper, and goes to bed. The child goes to sleep in the nursery with the nanny.
The hostess and the teacher remain alone, in two large rooms, drink tea, lock both the entrance and exit doors, and so on for the whole night until dawn. Every day the same story.
What are they doing there alone? - I was curious to know from my nanny.
- But who, father, knows them; they don't let anyone in - how do you know? You can hear what they say, then they are silent.
- What about the husband?
- Husband is sleeping.
This goes on for years. I willingly visited this house, amused myself with the boy, joked and gossiped with Avdotya Egorovna, and always in the presence of my nurse (who did not lose sight of me) drank tea, coffee, chocolate, as much as fit into my soul. One day I come - silence, darkness, the curtains are lowered.
What's happened? Avdotya Egorovna is not well. I look - my Avdotya Yegorovna is lying on the floor, in only bed linen; the room smells of something volatile.
I hear - something mutters; the nanny is near her and makes some signs for me to come out. What a parable! It turned out that this sweet lady brushes her teeth with tobacco and then revels in Hoffmann's drops, which were then in great use as a home remedy for all dashing diseases. Then Hoffmann's drops were replaced by wormwood, and, finally, by a simple one.

The teacher finished the course. The owner was flabby more than before and became even more impregnable; and the hostess, having drunk herself from the circle, carried away my kind, sweet nurse, Katerina Mikhailovna, into a binge. /…/

Vasily Vereshchagin

From the impressions of the very first years, nothing conscious remained with me; they said that I always asked the nanny: “folders-coke!”: folders - bread; coke - bones, which I really liked to gnaw. I was also told that my mother sometimes beat me very little, half-jokingly, half-seriously, and in order not to leave an angry feeling in me, after the execution she made me shout: “Ku-ka-river!” - in grief, in tears, I performed
order, but, fortunately, I do not remember it at all.
I also vaguely remember quarrels over me as a nurse with our first tutor Vitmak Fyodor Ivanovich and even with my mother, whom she did not allow me to punish. I was, as they said, a sickly, nervous child. Almost all of us suffered from what we called scrofula, in fact, wet lichens, for which we were treated with decoctions, the application of ferns and other home remedies; by the grace of mosquitoes, however, scratching the skin of children was only natural, and there were a great many mosquitoes!

I also remember the ladies - landowners and officials, leading a conversation on sofas "in the fireplace" and "living room". Here, for the first time, my own figure appears quite clearly before me: in a blue merino shirt stitched with red lace, with the same bag for a handkerchief over my right shoulder, in white calico pants, I go to greet the guests. My hair is neatly combed and heavily pomaded with lipstick - "Musatova in Moscow with her son," as the label on the bank said - pantaloons
starched and noisy.
- Nanny, how crunchy! - I say to the old woman, following me, or, rather, following us, because I remember myself with my older brother. The nanny, also dressed up and without tobacco under her nose, walks with a festive expression on her face and affectionately bows low to the ladies, calling everyone by their names, with the addition of “mother” for those who are older.

What is this book about

Who is this book for?
Who are we? Who are our ancestors? How did they live? Who do we look like? How could it be or how should it be? Such questions, probably, have been asked and are being asked by every thinking Russian person. We can learn about how children were brought up in the 19th and 20th centuries from this collection of memoirs. History of thought and community development in Russia it is hardly possible ...

What is this book about
The book "Nanny" is a unique collection of memoirs of prominent figures of Russian culture and science of the 19th-20th centuries about their nannies. The idea of ​​the collection belongs to the remarkable Russian writer S. N. Durylin. Having collected a folder of memoirs of his famous contemporaries and predecessors, he, unfortunately, did not have time to start this work. However, the colossal historical and cultural significance phenomenon of the Russian nanny, "... this great mother of a Russian person only according to the law of love, and not according to the law of parenthood," made Victoria Nikolaevna Toropova - the author of the biography of S. N. Durylin (ZHZL) - complete an invaluable work.

Who is this book for?
Who are we? Who are our ancestors? How did they live? Who do we look like? How could it be or how should it be? Such questions, probably, have been asked and are being asked by every thinking Russian person. We can learn about how children were brought up in the 19th and 20th centuries from this collection of memoirs. The history of thought and social development in Russia can hardly be fully understood without the private history of families. This book is for everyone who cares about the way of life and customs of a bygone era, for a wide range readers interested in our culture.

Why We Published This Book
For us, a Russian nanny is always Arina Rodionovna ... But there were other geniuses, and other nannies. "For thousands of years, it was the pedagogy of mothers, grandmothers, nannies that was the historical pedagogy of an entire people," writes Sergey Durylin. "Children's theology," he calls the pure Orthodox faith of the nanny, which she instills in her child. Today, nannies are reappearing in families - but they are subject to completely different requirements. Maybe the criteria for choosing a nanny for your child should still be built according to a different principle? It is proposed to think about this while reading this book, which today becomes more relevant than ever.

"Zest" edition
Sergei Durylin, Alexander Pushkin, Sofia Kapnist-Skalon, Nikolai Pirogov, Alexander Herzen, Peter Schumacher, Yakov Polonsky, Sergei Solovyov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Nikitin, Grigory Ge, Modest Mussorgsky, Vasily Vereshchagin, Alexander Vereshchagin, Andrey Leskov, Sofia Kovalevskaya, Anna Chertkova, Sergey Taneev, Evgeny Trubetskoy, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Ivan Bunin, Nadezhda, Tatyana Shchepkina-Kupernik, Alexei Remizov, Alexander Blok, Maria von Bock (nee Stolypina), Vladislav Khodasevich, Anastasia Tsvetaeva - this is not a complete list of names our great compatriots who left amazing memories of their childhood and nannies.

Quote:
The nanny put me in front of the icon - "Seven Sleeping Youths" - with an always burning, dark crimson lamp with white spots and taught me to whisper a prayer: "My guardian angel! Save me and have mercy, give me sleep and peace and strengthen my strength." This prayer is not found in any prayer books. It was folded by the nanny herself, for us children, - she folded it right there, in front of the icon. And if it happened that I forgot all the prayers, I will not forget this one.
... Oh, sweet unwise theology of a nanny and a mother! You are undeniable. You heal and forgive...
Sergei Nikolaevich Durylin
2nd edition.

Nanny ... How much warmth and affection in this word ... Today it's hard to imagine perfect image a loving nanny and finding one is also quite difficult. Yes, and there is no particular need for this, because most of today's children go to kindergartens. But just over a century ago, children were brought up at home. As the famous song says:

They say that in the old days it was like this:
Many brothers and sisters had a lot of fun.
They drank milk together, ate dry food together,
Real kindergarten each had a hut!
(Yu.Entin, A.Rybnikov)

In the old days, educators were the parents themselves, nurses or nannies. “In old age, a nanny was assigned to the girl until her marriage and kept honorary title it's forever"- wrote V.I.Dal. Nannies in Russia had a special status. They were real members of the family, they ate with the gentlemen at the same table, received salaries and clothes. Good nannies were “passed down” from children to grandchildren. Many famous Russian writers, poets and other artists spoke warmly about their nannies. And largely thanks to the efforts of the nannies, many of them took place, as creative personalities. Today we also want to recall the most famous Russian nannies.

The most famous Russian nannies.

Arina Rodionovna.

Nanny of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, perhaps the most famous nanny in the history of Russia. How many warm words the poet dedicated to her in his poems. A simple serf peasant woman, it was she who instilled little Sasha love for the word, telling Russian fairy tales and introducing folklore. In addition to pupils from the Hannibal family, Arina Rodionovna herself had four children.

At little Sasha she was a nanny until the age of 7, and then an "uncle" and a tutor were assigned to him.

Arina Rodionovna died after a short illness at the age of 70 on July 29, 1828 in St. Petersburg, in the house of Olga Pavlishcheva (Pushkina).

Annushka.

Anna Mikhailovna.

It was thanks to his nanny that another writer took place - Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov. Annushka was for little Vanya a source of knowledge of Russian folklore. The writer recalled: “Story after story flowed. The nanny narrated with ardor, picturesquely, with enthusiasm, in places with inspiration, because she herself half believed the stories. Many of her stories formed the basis of some of the author's works (Son Oblomov, Russians in Japan, etc.)

It is a pity that we can say almost nothing about this obscure Russian Simbirian woman who put her soul into her "Vanya" and so fully, albeit namelessly, participated in the creation of "Oblomov", and other Goncharov's masterpieces

Kryukova Alena (Elena) Frolovna.

[OK. 1780, Moscow - 1850s, ibid.]

Nanny of Fyodor Dostoyevsky raised not only little Fedya, but his seven brothers and sisters. Unlike the serf Arina Rodionovna, Alena Frolovna was from the bourgeois class and was hired as a nanny. “She was a woman with a clear cheerful character. She told such glorious tales! .. "- Fedor Mikhailovich recalled the nanny.

After the death of M.F. Dostoevskoy Alena Frolovna lived in Darovoe together with M.A. Dostoevsky and then was an informant of the writer's brother A.M. Dostoevsky, telling him as an eyewitness about recent months father's life and circumstances of his death.

Dunyasha.

Dunyasha - nanny of the famous Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina. She also raised her brother Lyova. Surprisingly, Dunyasha did not approve of her pupil's enthusiasm for ballet and was very sorry for Tamarochka. It seemed to her that ballet was very hard work (which, in general, is true). During Tamara Karsavina's debut performance at the Mariinsky Theatre, Dunyasha even burst into tears of pity!..

Katerinushka.

Ekaterina Ioakimovna.

Katerinushka - nanny of the famous Soviet philologist, culturologist and art critic Dmitry Sergeevich Likhachev. "My nanny's name was Katerinushka," the scientist recalls. “The only thing that survived from Katerinushka is a photograph in which she was taken with my grandmother Maria Nikolaevna Konyaeva. The photo is bad, but characteristic. Both laugh to tears. Katerinushka nursed my mother, nursed my brothers. We wanted her to help us with our "runches" - Verochka and Milochka, but something prevented her. She had a lot of interference, moreover, unexpected ones. She helped literally everyone and did not think about remuneration.

Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote about nannies: “Nanny in Russia was a very special social stratum. hot Orthodox faith, extraordinary kindness and caring, a sense of dignity, elevated her above the position of a servant and turned her into a family member.

He himself was brought up by a nanny - Anna Katamenkova, whom he considered the embodiment of a classic Russian nanny.

Have you noticed how affectionately the pupils called their nannies? Annushka, Katerinushka, Dunyasha...
That is how their names have gone down in history.

Thank you dear nannies!