A high-profile story is being discussed in St. Petersburg: a teacher was fired there after she read poems by Daniil Kharms to high school students and Alexander Vvedensky. The teacher Serafima Saprykina said on the social network that the story happened in December.
“The director of gymnasium 168 of the Central District of St. Petersburg, Lebedeva Svetlana Andreevna, called me, Serafima Olegovna Saprykina, who works as an organizing teacher, and ordered me to quit, as I read poems of “enemies of the people” to tenth graders,” Saprykina said.
According to the teacher, the lesson dedicated to the work of Kharms and Vvedensky was agreed with the head teacher. However, the director of the gymnasium called the poets “accomplices of the Nazis.” According to Saprykina, she was offered to resign of her own free will, otherwise she was promised to be fired under the article “loss of confidence.”
At school, the situation was commented as follows: they say, Saprykina worked for several months and left, finding another job.
Boris Vishnevsky, deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, stood up for the teacher. He wrote on Facebook that the situation should be checked.
“This should not get away with it. And yes, in the same Central District, the administration wants to destroy the image of Kharms. An iconic coincidence,” the deputy said.
Vishnevsky added that he had already contacted Saprykina and would send a request to the education committee in the near future. The deputy assured that he would require “checking and taking measures.”
Even the Kremlin learned about the situation. The journalists asked the press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov the corresponding question. He noted that the information needs to be verified.
“This question needs to be asked to the Ministry of Education after all. This is a rather complicated question. There you first need to find out – it was like that, it was not like that,” Peskov is quoted as saying. RIA News.
Kharms was accused by the Soviet authorities of “defeatist moods”. He died in the Kresty prison in 1941. In the same year, Vvedensky, accused of counter-revolutionary agitation, died during the transfer.