A letter from Malevich to Semevsky about Kovalevskaya

Abstract

The biographical literature on Sofya Vasilyevna Kovalevskaya has to a large extent relied on her own memoirs, published in Vestnik Evropy only months before her death, and an autobiographical story published posthumously in Russkaya Starina. In this paper we present and discuss the full Russian text with English translation of a letter, previously unpublished, from Kovalevskaya's teacher in childhood and adolescence, Iosif Ignatyevich Malevich, to the editor of Russkaya Starina, Mikhail Ivanovich Semevsky, in which he repudiates her depreciation of his role in her schooling, criticizes her self-portrayal, and provides information about her early education which runs counter to parts of the biographical literature on Kovalevskaya.