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Women’s Parochial School Building is 120

In 2011 it is the 120^th  anniversary of the building, where in the XIX-XX centuries the women’s parochial school of Vyoshenskaya was housed.

It is situated in Sholokhov Street next to the M.A. Sholokhov teacher-training college and is used now as a handicraft workshop for the students. It is a memorial of historic and cultural heritage and is a structure of the preservation zone.

The women’s school was long situated in a rented house, then, in 1891, a two-storey house was built for the school with two light and spacious classrooms, a two-room flat for the supervisor and a joiner’s workshop downstairs for the men’s school.

The women’s school was initially one-year, then it was transformed into a two-year school. At first there were three women-teachers. Besides grammar and sums the subjects of needlework and religion were taught.

The honorary trustee of the Vyoshenskaya parochial women’s school from 1897 till 1918 was Sofiya Popova (the daughter of the army foreman and a lady of the manor), in whose house Anastasiya Danilovna, M.A. Sholokhov’s mother, lived and worked as housemaid. The house was visited by the local intellectuals to join literary readings.

The school house was built of wood, clayed and white-washed, stove-heated. The floor was wooden, unpainted. Near the porch there was a beautiful pear-tree and a pole with a bell on it. The bell was sounded for the students to gather for their classes and was heard all over the stanitsa.

The school grounds looked peculiar with a kitchen-garden, an orchard northwards of the school and with fruit-trees and bushes planted on the rest part of the grounds.

Downstairs, the workshops of the men’s school were located, where the boys were taught joinery, locksmith’s trade, gardening.

After the October revolution both the men’s and the two-year women’s schools were reorganized to form a labour school. In 1919 the Decree was carried “About education of the RSFSR population”, and all the people aged 8-50 were taught reading and writing. In the building of the labour school a First Stage four-year school was set up to educate both children and adults. The student body amounted to 450-500.

In 1933 the labour school was reorganized into a seven-year secondary school. In the years of the Great Patriotic war the headquarters of the 197 infantry division commanded by general M.I. Zaporozhchenko was housed.

After the war the school building was reconstructed. The seven-year school occupied a part of the house, in the other part the House of Culture was temporarily situated.

In 1950 the building was completely passed to the school, where day and evening classes were resumed.

In the 1960-s the school building was reconstructed to open joinery and locksmith’s workshops. The secondary school moved into a new building nearby.

In 1976 a new secondary school was built, and the former building was occupied by the M.A. Sholokhov teacher-training college. And in the old building there were college workshops for the prospective teachers.

When the State M.A. Sholokhov Museum-Reserve was founded, in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya there was determined a protection zone of the cultural heritage sites (historic and cultural memorials) and from 1987 onward the building of the workshops (the latter women’s parochial school) entered into its structure.

Elena  Diyachenko