Skorokhodova Olga Ivanovna: life in silence and darkness

Skorokhodova Olga Ivanovna - a famous writer, who by fate's fate found herself in a difficult life situation. Deprived of childhood vision and hearing, with the help of indifferent noble people, she was able to adequately realize herself, leaving her descendants in the legacy of a huge literary heritage. The texts of her works contain the most interesting material about the features of the imagination and the specific perception of the surrounding world by a deaf-blind person.

Olga Ivanovna Skorokhodova, whose poems help to penetrate the inner world of a man deprived of hearing and sight, managed to preserve a sincere interest and joy in life and convincingly conveyed this to the younger generation in heartfelt literary lines. These records, relevant today, will be in demand in the future. Thanks to Professor IA Sokolyansky, colleagues and friends, Olga Skorokhodova's own biography took place: creative and scientific.

Skorohodova Olga Ivanovna: Biography

Olga Skorokhodova was born in 1911 in the small village of Belozyorka (now smt) near Kherson. Mom worked part-time in the clergyman's family, and the father, drafted into the army during the First World War, did not return to the family. At the age of 8, the girl had meningitis, complications of which became complete deprivation of the ability to hear and see by the age of 14. After the death of her mother in 1922, she lived for a short time with her relatives, then she was registered in a school for the blind (the city of Odessa).

It was in this institution that Olga managed to survive the hungry years, but nobody wanted to individually engage in an unheeded and not seeing girl. Her presence in the classroom with blind children was useless, as the teacher Olga did not hear at all. In addition, the school was often transferred from one place to another, there was a shortage of technical personnel, due to which blind children were forced to serve themselves.

Under the tutelage of IA Sokolyansky

The final loss of hearing was supplemented by violations of the vestibular apparatus: Olga Ivanovna Skorokhodova began to experience difficulties in walking, she often had dizziness. About the deaf-blind girl was informed to Professor Ivan Afanasievich Sokolyansky, who practiced in Kharkov and organized the Deafblind School-Clinic. Olga, who was transferred there in 1925, was given time to get used to the new situation, after which the professor engaged in the restoration of her oral speech, broken after hearing loss.

The institution in which Olga was brought up was very well-organized and had a small number of students: from 5 to 9 people, each of whom had an individual approach, had a personal place to study with the teacher. Also, the institution was equipped with a common room for physical exercises, joint games and other recreational activities. The garden was landscaped with paths, fenced flower beds, lawns and playgrounds. During the summer period, swings were installed on its territory, tables were taken out for table games, hammocks were hung.

To understand, feel, write down

Sokoliansky in his work with deafblind children was aimed to receive from them in any, even the simplest form, self-observation, and also taught them to talk about themselves and their own experiences.

Together with Olga, without waiting until she fully mastered the technique of writing, they began to describe the events on a daily basis and regularly return to previous records, re-writing every 20 times. As the written and literary speech was studied, Olga Ivanovna Skorokhodova edited the observations described, leaving the facts unchanged. The girl led the records on her own, without any outside interference and outside tales. Teachers for the purpose of acquaintance (not editing) showed already fully prepared material, which for 17 years of painstaking work has accumulated enough to publish the debut book. By the way, when you published the manuscript, Olga Skorokhodova was never subjected to editorial corrections.

Having received a secondary education under an individual program, Olga Skorokhodova decided to enter a pedagogical university. At the same time, she began actively communicating with the writer Maxim Gorky. Iridescent plans of the girl, as well as of all Soviet citizens, were destroyed by the Great Patriotic War, during which Olga Skorohodova lived in Kharkov. In 1944, moved to Moscow, where she got a job at the Institute of Defectology under the leadership of IA Sokolyansky.

First publications

Her debut book "How I perceive the world around me" was presented to the reader in 1947. In it, the author very delicately described the various types of sensitivity characteristic of people without hearing and sight: touch, temperature and taste sensations, vibrational feeling, sense of smell. Of particular interest are the entries in which Olga, analyzing her feelings, simultaneously seeks to understand and describe the impressions of people who can see and hear the world around them. The writer's self-observation has clearly shown that the knowledge with which a person is saturated can significantly expand the boundaries of the world he is experiencing. The book that was published fully demonstrated to the reader the process of spiritual growth of a person forced to live in absolute darkness and overwhelming silence. 1954 was marked by the publication of the second part of the book: "How I perceive, I represent and understand the world around me," the preface to which was the system of painstaking and long-term work on self-observation described by I. Sokolyansky.

Olga Skorokhodova: a creative heritage

The works of Olga Ivanovna Skorokhodova became widely known throughout the world, were translated into several languages. The experience of the life of a person who could not see and hear becomes an example for people in a difficult situation, and the history of development is an invaluable material for science and a methodical guide in the field of psychiatry, psychology and pedagogy.

Skorokhodova Olga Ivanovna, who is the author of a large number of poems and popular science articles, until the last days worked at the Moscow Institute of Defectology as a research assistant. There was no single-minded strong personality who managed to live in total darkness and silence all her life, in 1982.