The Rusin theme in the works by Elizaveta Vodovozova

Elizaveta Nikolaevna Vodovozova (nee Tsevlovskaya, second marriage surname - Semevskaya; born August 5(17), 1844; died March 23, 1923), a graduate of Smolny Institute, was a Russian children's writer, memoirist, and a most prominent researcher and educator of her time. In the late 1860s, together with her husband Vasily Vodovozov, she went to Europe to learn the methods of family education and raising children in public institutions. Her journalistic debut “What Stops a Woman from Becoming Independent?” was a response to Nikolay Chernyshevsky's novel What Is To Be Done? The essay was published under a pseudonym in the magazine Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya in September 1863. Vodovozova authored the most popular pre-revolutionary book for parents Mental and Moral Education of Children from the First Manifestation of Consciousness to School Age (St. Petersburg, 1871), which was re-issued seven times in pre-1917 Russia (7th ed. St. Petersburg, 1913). In this book, Vodovozova proposed to base preschool education on folk songs, games, and fairy tales. She supplemented her educational program with the manual Russian Folk Songs for One Voice and Active Games for Children (St. Petersburg, 1871). In the 1870s, Vodovozova actively published in the pedagogical journals Detskoe Chtenie, Narodnaya Shkola, and Golos Uchitelya. In 1880, she published a collection of children's stories For Leisure. In her memoirs, Vodovozova described the life and works of Konstantin Ushinsky, Vasily Vodovozov, Vasily Semevsky and other educators. Her autobiographical novel At the Dawn of Life (St. Petersburg, 1911), like other memoirs, had several reissues. Later, the novel was adopted for children and published as The Story of a Childhood to be actively published in pre-revolutionary and Soviet Russia. According to Vodovozova, her magnum opus aimed at dissiminating ethnographic knowledge among young people was the three-volume The Life of the Peoples of Europe. Narratives in Geography (St. Petersburg, 1875-1883). Having revised and abridged this work, she published it as a ten-volume low-price series How People of Different Nations Live (St. Petersburg, 1894-1901), illustrated by Viktor Vasnetsov and other famous artists. In the third volume “The Life of European Nations”, she told about the history of the Rusins of Galician Rus, the national revival, the current situation, the folk and literary language, religion, traditional material and spiritual culture. The ninth volume “How people live in the world” also describes the Galician Rusins, their history, religion, education, organizations, and folk culture. The writer tried to understand the reasons for the difficult material situation of the Rusin peasants.

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