The exhibition of the Penza Literature Museum includes the 1939 novella “Chukotka” by the Penza writer Tikhon Zakharovich Syomushkin.
Tikhon Syomushkin was born into the family of a carpenter in the village of Staraya Kutlya, Luninsky District, Penza Oblast. After studying for two years at a parochial school, he received the right to teach. For some time, he worked as a schoolteacher in the village of Ilmino, Nikolsky District. In 1921–1924, Tikhon Syomushkin studied at the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Pedagogical School at Moscow State University. He participated in many expeditions to Chukotka, including a statistical and economic as well as an anthropological expedition where he was the leader. In 1928, Tikhon Syomushkin became the director of the first boarding school in Chukotka. In 1955, he joined an Arctic expedition. In 1931, he published an article in the Soviet North magazine titled “Experience in Organizing a Boarding School at the Chukotka Cultural Center in the Far Eastern Krai.” The article made an impression on Mikhail Sergeyev who studied the Russian North and introduced Tikhon Syomushkin to the community of writers.
Tikhon Syomushkin lived among the Chukchi for eight years and collected a lot of valuable material in such areas as folklore, ethnography, and anthropology. By 1932, he had decided to document his experiences in writing. Throughout the 1930s, he worked on his book titled “Chukotka.” It was initially published under the title “Chukotka: Notes of a Teacher.” In a modest and calm manner, the writer described the organization of the first boarding school in Chukotka and the daily work of Russian teachers who patiently and persistently sought to understand both adults and children, introducing the Chukchi people to a new way of life.
