The Quiet Service of Maria Alekseevna Neklyudova (1866—1948)

Abstract

Maria Alekseevna Neklyudova (1866—1948) spent her whole life caring for girls: first, at the Patriotic Institute, then at the Smolny Institute for Noble Ladies, as well as the Odessa Women‘s Institute named after Emperor Nicholas I and finally at the Kharkiv Women‘s Institute, which she took out into exile and which she directed until its closure in 1932. Later she took care of the girls of the student dormitory in Belgrade, during the Second World War it gave shelter to yonger girls. Neklyudova took these girls from Serbia to Austria, however this step did not save them from repatriation to the Soviet Union. But even in exile in the village of Kuzkino of the Kuibyshev (Samara) region, she continued to take care of children, now looking after the children of a peasant in whose house she found shelter and where she lived until her death in 1948. Thus, she devoted her entire adult life to serving children and did not leave this work, in spite of all the difficulties. Neklyudova may not have been perfect, but she did her best to protect her maidens from the hardships and adversities of the reality surrounding them. In this paper, on the basis of the archival data, some milestones of Maria Alekseevna's life path, unknown in modern historiography, are restored. The materials of the periodical press and the memoirs of contemporaries help to understand what guided this woman in her sacrifice and indifference to other people's fate. The author tries to answer whether such a choice was her personal merit or was predetermined by the upbringing that she herself received within the walls of women's educational institutions for hereditary nobles in the Russian Empire.