Maria AleksEevna Bunina (married name LaskarzhEvskaya) was the sister of Ivan Bunin. She was born in Voronezh on March 27, 1873, in the house in DvorYAnskaya street. It is believed that she was named after her mother’s sister Maria Alexandrovna, who died in 1867. In his conversations with IrIna OdoYEvtseva Ivan  

Bunin often recalled his young days and was telling about his sister: “She was a pretty, dreamy, mild and graceful girl. She wasn”t a beauty, but still very attractive, slim, with radiant eyes. She was sixteen, and there was nobody around her to fall in love with, to be loved by. A real drama, you see. She spent hours sitting in front of the mirror and combing her hair, she was looking at herself at the mirror. She used to wear a colorful scarf around her head and lacy blouses that revealed her young breast. She smiled at me, made her eyes at me, and flirted openly with me, since there was no one else to flirt with. I praised her hair-do and the velvet ribbon around her neck, and this made her happy. She was so happy when I invited her to go for a walk with me or asked her to sing an old song to a guitar. And she blushed so prettily at my praises and compliments! The poems I wrote she learnt by heart, but she didn”t read anything else except them. She believed I was a star like Pushkin, at least not worse than him.”

Odoevtseva I.V. “On the Seine shores”

In 1898, Maria married Josef AdAmovich LaskarzhEvsky, who worked as an assistant engine driver at the railroad company. Their family lived in YefrEmov, KalUga, NovocherkAssk, GrYAzi, OrYOl. Her family life was not easy: financial trouble, hard childbirth, the death of a small daughter, her handsome husband used to have affairs with other women… Ivan AleksEevich had much compassion about his sister, supported her as much as he could.

Once he confessed to GalIna KuznetsOva: “I feel a kind of guilt for her. Life is a mystery, life is horrible. I took once the Caucasian Express train to Baku, and it is really luxurious - not even English Queen has a train like this: huge windows, iron-cladded walls, yellow leather seats in the first class… and here is the GrYAzi station. I get off the train, Masha”s husband comes to greet me… and so we come into their house… And there is Masha, nervous, thin, constantly smoking, and two children, miserably looking, with big ears, like poor kittens. And their mom lives with them… Ah, life is horrible! … Still there were things that made it not as horrible. During the day Masha was usually cheerful, singing, and in the evening I used to buy a lot of different stuff - wine, cheese, great sardines, she was drinking wine, then she took the guitar, wrapped herself in a warm and mild shawl and started singing something, like our father did. She was really talented…”

Kuznetsova G.N. “Grasse diary”

Maria Alekseevna died on November 3, 1930 in Rostov-on-Don, from tuberculosis.