The story “Chuk and Gek” was first published in 1939 under the title “The Telegram.” Later, in the first issues of the newspaper “Pionerskaya Pravda” in 1939, it was published under the title “Chuk and Gek.”

Arkady Petrovich conceived “Chuk and Gek” while staying at the summer house of his friend, children’s writer and journalist Ruvim Isaevich Fraerman, in Solotcha, near Ryazan.

One day they went fishing and were returning home in the evening. Before going to bed, Arkady Petrovich said,

The writer began working on the story in December 1938 in the village of Golovkovo. Arkady Petrovich informed his wife,

The story was a great success, and critics rightly called it one of the best stories in Soviet literature.

In 1989, an article entitled “Meetings with Gaidar” appeared in the newspaper “Arzamas Pravda, ” revealing that a woman living in Gorodets had met Arkady Gaidar in 1935 and became the prototype for the mother in “Chuk and Gek.”

Her name was Praskovya Stepanovna Seryogina. She was born on October 25, 1904, a few kilometers from Arzamas, along the banks of the Tesha River, in the village of Yamskaya Sloboda. When the girl turned 11, her mother died during childbirth. Her father remarried, but in 1920 his wife died of typhus. The household chores and caring for her father and three step-siblings fell on the 16-year-old girl. Praskovya contracted typhus, which caused complications with her eyes, and by the age of 18, she was nearly blind.

When Arkady Gaidar left at the end of August, the whole village came to see him off. At parting, the writer said that he would return 1941 and bring the promised book. Arkady Petrovich could not fulfill his promise: he was killed on the frontlines in October 1941.