A diary

Elizaveta Dyakonova was born on August 15, 1874 in Nerekht of the Kostroma province in a poor merchant family. From the age of 11, she kept a diary, the first entry in which belongs to May 1886.
A diary in Nerekhta was started, and continued in Yaroslavl, where the family moved after the death of his father. How are these early years filled?

Home life flows, rather gloomy, gymnasium life stretches - learning, learning, to infinity. World news falls into the diary: the collapse of the royal train in October 1888, the resignation of Bismarck, the death of Alexander III. Sentimental notes of a provincial girl quickly turn into a diary in the most serious meaning of the word: these are no longer naive lines, but the result of the mind of cold observations and hearts of woeful notes. Lisa
Thinking about his purpose, about the reluctance to follow the rules and standards that impose family and society. In May 1891, she graduated from a gymnasium and, dreaming of continuing education, contrary to her mother’s will, entered the Higher Women"s Bestuzhev courses in St. Petersburg.

New impressions, new experience, fracture in fate, the happiest and almost incredible: “... am I free? And I can go wherever I want to do - what I want, to do - how I want, and these chains of slavery no longer connect me ... After all, this is true? I am studying ... I am in courses ...

Lisa’s life sparkled with new colors: student holidays and rallies, political and religious and philosophical circles, cabinets of newspaper and journal editions, acquaintance with
Writer V. Korolenko, publicist M. Menshikov, public figure N. Neplyuev ... She reads poems and prose, fiction and treatises, in Russian and French. Every now and then on her diaries, the surnames and lines of Pushkin, Lermontov, Griboedov, Turgenev, Zhukovsky, Tyutchev, Nekrasov, Feta, Shakespeare, Montesquieu, Russo, Madame de Steel, Goethe, Schiller, Byron, Stoldyal, Gugo, Mapasan, Zola appear , France ... The main thing for
She is the name in literature - Leo Tolstoy, whom she worships, sometimes disputes, but the internal dialogue with which she has been leading all her life.

At the end of 1900, Elizabeth went to Paris, entering the Law Faculty of Sorbonne. At this time, she hopelessly fell in love with her psychiatrist, who treated her from headaches and quick fatigue. However, despite the constant ailments, the girl made big plans for the future: she wanted to become a writer and activist of the female movement, which originated in Russia following the example of England and France. But fate ordered otherwise ...

In the summer of 1902, Dyakonova went on vacation to Russia, going to prepare for exams for the second year in the Cute Nerekhta. On the way, she wrapped herself in Tyrol, where her relatives rested at that time. Here, in the picturesque environs of Lake Achaenzee, there was a tragedy. The girl alone went to the mountains in inclement weather and did not return. She was unsuccessfully searched for a month, and when they found a lifeless body, the circumstances of the death caused a huge number of speculations ... “Lisa seems to have finished suicide,” her sister Nadezhda Dyakonova wrote. - They found her at the stream named, the dress is tied to steam. She rushed from one of the ledges, but unsuccessfully, broke both legs, the suffering was probably terrible ... But one can assume something else - that she went crazy and hunger, undressed and rushed ... Everything is very strange ... Brother Elizabeth, Elizabeth"s brother, Alexander Dyakonov, on the contrary, warmly denied the suicide of his sister,
Drawing a picture of an accident. Relatives tried to find answers to numerous questions in the girl’s diary, beginning with the words: “I would not want to die without leaving any trace on Earth, this desire is insanely on my part, but what to do, I do, I
I am writing the truth ...

Extremely sincere, Lisa’s diary was recognized as a vivid literary work: the short life of the girl described by herself earned the attention of readers and critics. “The late Elizabeth Dyakonova set out the same purpose as Maria Bashkirtseva, to write a“ diary ”that would serve as a“ photo of a woman, ”he noted in the“ Petersburg newspaper ”,“ <...> Dyakonova is true to truth and real to the last bar. ”