Diaries of the Savodnik Sisters. Introduction, editing and comments by V.S. Savchuk

Abstract. The diaries published here belong to teenagers and later young women Olya and Natasha Savodnik, daughters of Vladimir Fedorovich Savodnik, a philology professor from Moscow. He was a college friend of Valery Bryusov and also wrote poetry; however, he became famous thanks to his numerous textbooks and anthologies in the Russian literature. The surviving parts of the diaries were written in July 1914 – December 1920 (Olya’s diary) and November 1915 – October 1917 (Natasha’s diary). Some pages were cut out later, probably by the authors. The diaries give an idea about raising children in a family of Moscow intelligentsia in the beginning of the XX cent., about such families’ everyday life, their perception of the First World War, the 1917 Revolution, the Civil War. The reader can follow the coming-of-age process of the Savodnik sisters and thus acquire a better understanding of developmental psychology.

Keywords: Olga and Natalia Savodnik, the everyday life of the Russian intelligentsia, raising teenagers, Chernyavskaya gymnasium, First World War, 1917 Revolution.