Cherished Names and Persons
Almost everybody knew her in our town. If you ask residents of Kirillov who Tatiana Tserkovnitskaya was, you will be answered that she was an honorary freeman of the town, an old and faithful friend of the Kirillo-Belozersky museum-reserve, a donator and indispensable assistant of museum employees in the study of local history. The others will tell you that she was an excellent connoisseur of poetry, music and painting. Many graduates of the Vologda Regional Cultural and Educational School (now the Vologda Regional Training School of Culture) located in Kirillov will name her their favourite teacher whose literature lessons they will always remember. And even those people who have communicated with Tatiana Tserkovnitskaya only once will tell you that she was a charming and beautiful woman, a good company and a wonderful narrator. Tatiana Vasilievna possessed a rare talent to make the world around her kinder and better. She was always ready to hear out, to understand and to support in difficult moments even an unknown person. Her delicacy, tact and intelligence charmed everybody who was lucky to communicate with Tatiana Tserkovnitskaya.
Tatiana Tserkovnitskaya was born on September 29, 1927, into the family of water transport worker Vasily Alexandrovich Baldin and his wife Elisaveta Alexeevna, who worked as an elementary school teacher. The Baldins lived near the fourth lock of the Northern Dvina Canal at that time. Then her father was transferred to Kirillov. Tanya Baldina attended the secondary school in Kirillov and then went to school of Volokoslavino in the ninth and tenth grades. In 1945, the leaver of the village school entered one of the best higher education institutions of the country - Leningrad State Pedagogical Institute named after Gertsen. On graduating from it, she became a teacher of Russian and literature. It may be said without exaggeration that Tatiana Tserkovnitskaya was a patriot of the Kirillov district. She left it only for study in Leningrad and work in the village school of the Leningrad region where she was assigned on graduation from the institute. Tatiana Vasilieva returned to Kirillov in 1954 and got married to Konstantin Sergeevich Tserkovnitsky in 1962. Her life was connected with the Vologda Regional Cultural and Educational School (now the Vologda Regional Training School of Culture) from 1954 through 1980. Her pupils and colleagues still remember her literature lessons and evenings of poetry and Russian romance which Tatiana Tserkovnitskaya prepared. Great erudition of the teacher and her immense love for the Russian literature helped to foster kindness, generosity, honesty and aspiration to become better. Tatiana Tserkovnitskaya was awarded numerous honorary certificates, the badge of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR “For Excellent Work”, the medal “For Valiant Labour - In Commemoration of the Centenary of the Birth of Vladimir Lenin”, the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.
In the 1980s, Tatiana Tserkovnitskaya became an organizer, a script writer and an active participant of the “Literary drawing-room” in the Kirillov district library. We won’t make a mistake saying that nobody knew as many poems by heart in our town as she did. Tatiana Vasilieva could recite verses of Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Tyutchev, Alexander Blok, Ivan Bunin, Bulat Okudzhava, Sergey Orlov and other poets for hours. It was exactly Tatiana Tserkovnitskaya who prepared a selection of poems written by the Kirillov’s authors for publication in the first issue of the anthology “Kirillov” (1994).
The exhibition titled “The Tserkovnitskys in the History and Culture of Kirillov” was open in the museum in 2004-2005. Most of the displayed items were brought from the house of their family. Tatiana Tserkovnitskaya and her husband Konstantin Sergeevich (1923-2008) donated many articles of the town life of the early 20th century, documents, and photographs to the museum. The Order of Lenin presented to her father V.A. Baldin in 1954 was one of the family heirlooms handed over to the Kirillo-Belozersky museum-reserve. In 2010, Tatiana Vasilievna donated a considerable part of the large home library of the Tserkovnitskys to the museum. The book collection of the Kirillo-Belozersky museum-reserve was replenished with more than 2000 books and periodicals the chronological framework of which covered the period from 1859 to 2007. Thanks to Tatiana Tserkovnitskaya, the museum communicated with many old residents who had left their native town, but kept family archives. As a result, the museum holdings were replenished with interesting documents and photographs of the early 20th century. The continuity doesn’t break and wonderful cultural and historical heritage of the Kirillov land the fate of which is closely connected with the fate of Russia is preserved exactly thanks to such enthusiasts as T.V. Tserkovnitskaya.
