Nadezhda Alexandrovna[1] was born on March 29, 1938, in a noble family in Sofievka, Novgorod province. She receives a serious home education. She marries V. Belozersky and in 1856 comes to St. Petersburg. She makes a “salon” in his mansion and every Monday famous St. Petersburg’s liberal figures gather in it – Turgenev, Chernyshevsky, and others. She also knows and invites prominent representatives of the Ukrainian culture, as her husband is Ukrainian. At first, she collaborates in her husband’s magazine “Osnova”, and since 1878 she is the editor of the pedagogical magazine “Education and Training”, which she publishes together with M. Tsebrikova. She is very interested in the problems of higher education and women’s education in general, as well as the position of women in the intellectual labor market. She leaves her husband with three children, gives up his money, and thus joins the “translation artel”. She translates historical novels for the Historical Journal, writes reviews in “Ancient and New Russia” under a pseudonym because it is not customary for a woman to support herself with professional intellectual work. She starts with translations in the Russian press. She translates fairy tales from French and Italian. In 1868 she becomes secretary of the famous historian, writer, and pedagogue Nikolai Ivanovich Kostomarov / 1817 – 1885 /. Through him, she gains research experience and begins independent research in Russian history, where she searches and discovers the women’s issue. In this way, she creates portraits of “historical women” who lived in different historical epochs. Nadezhda Alexandrovna gets involved in public activities through Trubnikova’s circle and becomes an active participant in the Women’s Publishing Artel and one of the organizers of women’s higher education in St. Petersburg.
[1] There is a personal fund – 58 in the Russian State Archives of Literature and Art, where there are manuscripts, bibliography, letters, and biographical documents. She is presented in the fund as a translator and writer.