Samodelova E.A.

‘Piteryachka’ woman as a heroine of Russian fiction of the 19th–21st centuries in regional studies. Pp.81-94.

UDC 821.161.1.09

DOI 10.37724/RSU.2025.87.2.008

Abstract. This is the first attempt to study the type of the ‘Piteryachka’ (a Petersburger woman) in Russian fiction. It first appeared in the second half of the 19th century and still remains relevant. This nickname for a heroine is characteristic of the Northern Russian colloquial speech and is found in territories north of Moscow, starting from the Tver Governorate/Region and extending to the Petersburg Governorate (renamed to Leningrad Region); this is supported by available data; but the areal of use may be even wider, extending to the North-West and the Russian North). It is interesting that this dialect word occurs in fiction, penetrating even into titles of literary works, but is not yet entered in dialect dictionaries, although the National Corpus of the Russian Language quotes it. The works in which the word ‘Piteryachka’ is embedded share these plot features: the author describes a heroine (her appearance, clothes and speech peculiarities) who was born in a village, but has been to St. Petersburg and comes back home or, more rarely, tries to settle in the neighborhood of the capital city. Certain elements of narrative and artistic details obligatory are common: a description of the train and a railroad incident, the woman’s first acquaintance with the huge city, a mention of her passport or its absence, an onion-shaped pocket watch as an important attribute of the heroine (it is also indispensable for a ‘Piteryak’ – a male character). With the return of the Russian capital from Petrograd (St. Petersburg) to Moscow in 1918, it would seem that fiction works about Piteryachkas could cease. However, this did not happen as there appeared biographical publications devoted to personal life experiences. These texts were based on memoirs of natives of Tver, Kostroma, and Petersburg (over the centuries, such works were also written by writers from the Vologda and Yaroslavl areas). The Piteryachka is a specific North-Russian female type within a bigger social group: otkhodniks (itinerant or seasonal workers). According to fiction, in social terms this female status varies even more widely, from peasantry to lower middle class. When modern writers create images of Piteryachka women, they show them through the eyes of local peasant women or servants of landowners. This reveals the authors’ search for new folklore forms in literature.

Keywords: Piteryachka, Piteryak, ‘Chronicle of the village of Smurino’ by P. V. Zasodimsky, ‘Portrait of Vasily Mescherin’ by I. V. Evdokimov, ‘The Eighth Complex of Scythian’ by A. I. Chistyakov-2, Anna Doganovich, A. Chistyakov.

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