Lydia Korneievna Chukovskaya was born in 1907 in Helsingfors, Russian Finland. She later moved to St. Petersburg where she lived with her father. Chukovskaya was a significant writer and poet who is best known for her novella Sofia Petronova.

Chukovskaya was born into a literary family, as her father Kornei Chukovsky was a successful and well-regarded children’s novelist. Her experiences within her family and the cultured St. Petersburg environment led her to develop a passion for literature early on; however, her career was interrupted when she was sent to Saratov for exile soon after the 1917 revolution when a friend used her father’s typewriter to write an anti-Bolshevik pamphlet. Chukovskaya was eventually permitted to return to St. Petersburg, now named Leningrad, where she obtained a job at a children’s publishing house as an editor and simultaneously began to write stories. 

As Chukovskaya began her career, so too began the Great Terror of 1936-38. During this time, Chukovskaya married Mitya Bronstein; however, her husband was arrested in 1937 and taken away from her during the Great Terror. Chukovskaya briefly fled to Kiev, but soon returned home with her daughter to her old apartment where she found a government surveillant posted in her husband’s old bedroom. Chukovskaya kept a diary during this period, but left out many things in it, such as her friendship with poet Anna Akhmatova that could have led to arrest if discovered. Although fear plagued her, Chukovskaya felt that to not write would be a crime; therefore, in 1938 she obtained work in a writer’s colony where she finished Sofia Petrovna. 

This famous novella was Chukovskaya’s fictional account of the Great Terror, and follows the story of Sofia Petrovna, a Soviet Everywoman. Chukovskaya drew inspiration from her own experiences when writing this book. Just like Chukovskaya, Sofia Petrovna works in the publishing industry and witnessed the Soviets denouncing and arresting her boss, co-workers, and friends. Both Chukovskaya and Sofia Petrovna witnessed the arrest and subsequent disappearance of close family members. Throughout the novel, Sofia Petrovna’s character undergoes tremendous hardship, which is in turn reflected in her character development. While she initially has confidence that the Soviet state would not arrest someone innocent, like her son, as she discovers her son’s ultimate sentence, she begins to lose faith and exhibits physical and psychological turmoil. Sofia’s character development clearly demonstrates the pain and suffering that the women left behind — wives, mothers, and daughters of those arrested — experienced, and certainly draws from her own life experiences during the Great Terror. Perhaps the most poignant scene of Sofia Petrovna, the title character burning her son’s letter to avoid prosecution by the Soviets was taken from Chukovskaya’s life: Akhmatova used to show Chukovskaya verses of what would become her own account of the Stalinist Terror, Requiem, then Chukovskaya would memorize them, and Akhmatova would then set the paper containing the verses on fire.

Chukovskaya was a courageous dissident whose own experiences with Soviet suppression motivated her stories, like Sofia Petrovna, and her poems, which touched upon her life and the state of the Soviet Union. In her later years, she spoke out against the persecution of dissidents like Joseph Brodsky, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Andrei Sakharov. Sofia Petrovna was finally published in the Soviet Union in February 1988, in the era of Gorbachev’s glasnost (openness). Chukovskaya became popular in the West for her dissent, but was closely watched by the KGB in her home country. Later on in life, Chukovskaya was finally afforded the recognition that she deserved, and now she is known as an important figure in Russian Literature. After a life-long writing career, Chukovskaya died in February 1996 in Peredelkino, Russia at the age of 89. 

Bibliography 

“Lydia Chukovskaya”, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/LydiaLydia_Chukovskaya 
     Accessed 19 September 2020.

“Lydia Chukovskaya, editor, writer, heroic friend” Hidden Women of History, 
     https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-lydialydia-chukovskaya-editor-writer-heroic-friend-108509
     Accessed 19 September 2020.

Vronskaya, Jeanne. "OBITUARY: Lydia Chukovskaya." The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 23 Oct. 2011, 
     www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituaty-lydia-chukovskaya-1341659.html 
     Accessed 5 October 2020.