Nadia Kologrivova

Nadia Kologrivova, a daughter of the wealthy industrialist Lavrentii Mikhailovich Kologrivov, is connected to the novel’s young characters both as a schoolgirl and as the person who helps Larisa Feodorovna Guishar find a place in her family’s household. Her appearances are brief, but they link the lives of children and young women to the different kinds of shelter and constraint afforded by family position and wealth.

Identity and Background

Nadia is one of the daughters of Lavrentii Mikhailovich Kologrivov and his wife, Serafima Filippovna; her sister is Lipa. The Kologrivovs’ wealth is part of her social setting, and it later makes Nadia’s offer of employment to Larisa consequential: her family can provide a position and a place to stay when Larisa needs to leave her mother’s home.

As a schoolgirl living at the Voskoboinikovs’, Nadia is known to Nika Dudorov, who is two years younger. The account establishes her from outside her own perspective: the reader encounters her through Nika’s intense, aggrieved interpretation of their relationship rather than through an independent account of her thoughts.

Encounter with Nika Dudorov

Nika regards Nadia as someone who treats him as a child. He resents that she is fifteen and, in his view, looks down on him and speaks to him condescendingly. His reaction turns this slight into a private fantasy of violence: he imagines killing her by taking her out in a boat and drowning her. This is presented as a thought he repeats to himself, not as an action or a plan carried out.

The episode characterizes Nika’s mood and perception more directly than it characterizes Nadia. His furious language exposes how sharply he experiences his dependent position and the indignities he associates with it; the narrative does not confirm that Nadia shares his view of the encounter or intends to harm him. Her presence in this scene therefore matters in part as the object of a youthful grievance, while the intensity belongs to Nika’s response.

Help for Larisa Feodorovna Guishar

Later, Larisa writes to Nadia asking for help finding a well-paid tutoring position. Larisa explains that she needs to live away from her mother and appeals to Nadia’s connections with wealthy people. Nadia replies that the family is looking for a governess for Lipa and invites Larisa to come, adding that her parents are fond of her.

The offer is both practical employment and a change of living circumstances. Larisa subsequently spends three years at the Kologrivovs’ household, where, as the narrative describes it, she lives as if behind stone walls. No one bothers her, and even her mother and brother, from whom she has grown estranged, keep away. The household thus gives Larisa distance from her family, though the image of enclosure also marks the limits of her refuge.

Narrative Significance

Nadia’s importance lies in the contrast between the two brief episodes associated with her. In Nika’s recollection, she is a figure of social and personal condescension around whom his anger gathers; in Larisa’s appeal, she is a friend with access to a household able to offer paid work and shelter. The difference cautions against treating Nika’s hostile impression as a complete portrait of Nadia.

Her role in Larisa’s story is especially concrete: Nadia answers a request for help with an actual governess position, and that arrangement gives Larisa three years away from her mother and brother. The novel does not develop Nadia’s private motives or later life in these passages. Instead, it makes her consequential through what her family can offer and through the sharply different perspectives from which other young people experience her.