Maria Prilezhayeva was born in Yaroslavl to a family of impoverished
gentry. Her childhood years were spent in
Alexandrov. At the age of 16, having graduated from a local school, she started to work as a teacher in a village. In 1925 Prilezhayeva enrolled into the
Moscow University pedagogical faculty from which she graduated five years later, and went on to teach in schools, in
Arkhangelsk,
Zagorsk and
Moscow. In 1936, she started working for magazines and newspapers, reviewing books of Russian and foreign authors. In 1941, having learned of the death of one of her favorite students in the
Winter War, she wrote her first novel
Etot God (That Year). Several more school-themed books followed, including
Semiklassnitsy (The 7th Form Girls, 1944) and
Yunost Mashi Strogovoi (The Youth of Masha Strogova, 1948). Describing herself as a 'lyrical realist', Prilezhayeva cited
Leo Tolstoy,
Anton Chekhov and
Alexander Blok as her major influences. From the mid-1950s, Prilezhayeva's books became increasingly political.
S Beregov Medveditsy (From the Medveditsa River Banks, 1955) novel related the life story of
Mikhail Kalinin. Her 1970 novel
Zhizn Lenina (The Life of Lenin) earned her the N. K. Krupskaya RSFSR State Prize (1971) and later the
Lenin Komsomol Prize (1983). As a
Union of Soviet Writers' official, it was Prilezhayeva's duty to take part in all meetings concerning the
dissidents' cases, but in comparison to her colleagues she was considered a liberal. Author and lawyer Arkady Waksberg mentioned her among those who (unsuccessfully) tried to help the poet
Leib Kvitko, one of the victims of the so-called '
uprooting cosmopolitism' campaign. Polezhayeva was known to support young authors. Among her literary protégés were
Anatoly Aleksin,
Mikhail Alekseyev,
Albert Likhanov, and
Azat Abdullin. The 1980s political movement,
Perestroika, forced Prilezhayeva to reconsider her beliefs. She wrote in a diary in June 1987, "Some of my ideals have crashed... But how stupidly have they trampled them under feet, and how silly and naive those beliefs of mine have been". She died on April 10, 1989, in Moscow. == References ==