Matkhanova Natalya P.,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Science, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Letters of M.N. Stepanova to Pyotr Alekseevich Kropotkin and Sofya Grigoryevna Kropotkin
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2019-3-9
The article represents the publication of letters of Maria Nikolaevna Sleptsova (nee Lavrov) to a famous scientist and revolutionary Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin and his wife Sophia Grigoryevna in 1913–1920s. The author of the letters was linked with Kropotkin by a long acquaintance, close friendship and family ties (her aunt on her mother’s side was the wife of his brother). There was similarity if not in their views then in their moods. M.N. Sleptsova belonged to a fairly wide in the pre-revolutionary years circle of the near-revolutionary intelligentsia. Her mother, S.S. Lavrova (nee Berinda-Tchaikovskaya), and her husband, A.A. Sleptsov, in their youth participated in the populist movement. Maria herself spent her childhood and adolescence surrounded by her mother’s friends – populists, for several years she served as a rural medical assistant and a midwife. After the marriage, her husband and she organized a liberal publishing house that printed popular science books for children. After the revolution, the publishing house was nationalized, it was not possible to find a permanent job, so there was no food allowance. In the years of military communism the life of M.N. Sleptsova and her relatives were very hard, as well as the life of many representatives of the old Russian intelligentsia. It was difficult and sometimes impossible to find any job, they were plagued by cold and hunger. Sleptsova had to leave for time to Perm’, where a home, a job and a food allowance were promised to her by her random friend – a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and a well-known Bolshevik N.I. Ostrovskaya. Later Sleptsova still managed to become a member of the Union of writers, a personal pensioner. Published letters indicate a very close relationship between the author and the addressees, and their content reveals many details of the daily life of ordinary educated people – the surviving part of the old Russian intelligentsia. They add a lot of new colours to the description of the Kropotkin’s life in Dmitrov, where they moved to in May 1918, shortly after returning to Russia.
Publishing: 30/06/2019
How to cite: Matkhanova N.P. Letters of M.N. Stepanova to Pyotr Alekseevich Kropotkin and Sofya Grigoryevna Kropotkin // Historical Courier, 2019, # 3 (5). Article 9. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2019/ISTKURIER-2019-3-09.pdf
Links: Issue 3 2019
Keywords: epistolary; Peter A. Kropotkin; Maria N. Sleptsova; everyday life