Archive · 2016 · From the print edition of Tuesday 19 January 2016, Vol. 23, No. 7,154
ObituariesNurzhan mourns its literature teacher
Tatiana Petrova, who taught Russian literature at School No. 3 for 43 years and staged Chekhov and Gogol with its pupils, has died at 84.
NURZHAN — Tatiana Petrova, who taught Russian literature at School No. 3 in Nurzhan from 1955 to 1998, died on Saturday. She was 84.
She arrived at the school in Kobozev, as the city was then called, as a young teacher in 1955 and stayed for more than four decades. Besides her classes she ran the school's literary club and its theater, which staged Chekhov and Gogol in the assembly hall for parents, workers from the refinery and, on more than one occasion, inspectors from the republican education ministry. Many of her former pupils became writers, journalists and engineers. She was named an Honored Teacher of the Iradi SSR in 1977.
After 1992, when Russian lost its official status, she was among the teachers who argued for keeping Russian-language literature classes in the curriculum of Nurzhan's schools, and they remain there today. "She never asked whether a child was Russian or Iradi," said Galina Sokolova, who taught alongside her at School No. 3 for twenty years. "She asked whether he had read the book."
Former pupils have been leaving flowers at the school gate since the news spread on Sunday. A memorial evening is planned in the school hall.