7 Russian girls that the whole country knew

Agree, after all, people who have crossed the threshold of youth usually become famous throughout the country or the world. And earlier, when there was no Internet and even television, it was even harder to become famous and famous. Nevertheless, we present to you children whose images and biographies Russia knew by heart and loved with all her heart.

Grand Duchess Anastasia, the daughter of the last Emperor Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna, has always remained in the memory of Russians as a girl. According to her contemporaries, despite her 17-year-old age, Anastasia was a real child who loved to play pranks, play and parody others. What did this girl, who was canonized along with her entire royal family, manage to do?

During the First World War, she was only 14 years old, and she could not, like her older sisters and mother, be a nurse. She became a patroness of the hospital, gave her own money to buy medicines for the wounded, read aloud to them, gave concerts, wrote letters to their loved ones under dictation, played with them to distract those suffering from pain, sewed their underwear, prepared bandages and lint. Their photos were kept at her house after that, and she remembered the wounded by their first and last names. She taught some illiterate soldiers to read and write.

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, Anastasia and her family were shot in Yekaterinburg. For many years after the execution of the royal family, there was talk that Anastasia was still alive.

All Russian people know Vera Mamontova from the portrait of Valentin Serov "A Girl with peaches". There is one more portrait of her — "A Girl with a maple branch", painted by Viktor Vasnetsov nine years later. It is known that Vera had to wait a long time for marriage: she married the leader of the nobility of Moscow, Alexander Samarin, in 1903, after the death of her father, who did not give a blessing to the marriage.

Vera died suddenly of pneumonia at the age of 32, having managed to give birth to three children. Her husband, Alexander Dmitrievich, survived her by 25 years, but did not marry again, and in memory of Vera Mamontova built a snow-white church of the Life-Giving Trinity in the village of Averkievo, not far from their estate.

Everyone knows Vera Kondakova from the famous photo where a girl in a school dress with white bows kisses Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. She was then seven years old, she still could not read well, but she recited wonderfully, and she memorized the words of congratulations that she had to say to Stalin by ear: "Dear Comrade Stalin, this is for you from the Moscow guys..." No one told her that you can kiss Stalin — it was a personal impulse of a child who believed in the bright image of the leader of the Soviet Union.

The photo spread in huge circulations throughout the Soviet Union and instantly made Vera Kondakova popular. She was recognized on the streets, invited to the radio, and on the day of Stalin's death, the whole school came to her class to share her grief. Vera Kondakova still lives in Moscow, and the famous photo has been hanging on her wall all her life.

A Soviet graphic artist, Nadia left behind about 12 thousand drawings. It is impossible to calculate the exact number, since some of the works were presented to friends and acquaintances. Nadia, who has never studied drawing, began drawing at the age of five. Already in 1964, when the girl was 12 years old, her first exhibition was held. Nadia herself said that she writes immediately, without an eraser, because she sees all her drawings in advance.

Her legacy is mainly graphics, illustrations for books that were read aloud to her as a child or that she read herself later. Illustrations for ancient literature, Pushkin's fairy tales, "War and Peace", "The Master and Margarita", "The Little Prince" - this is an incomplete list of what this girl did to her 17 years. More than 160 exhibitions of her works have been held in various countries — Japan, Germany, the USA, India, Mongolia, Poland and many others. She died at the age of 17 from a rupture of a congenital aneurysm of a brain vessel.

A young goodwill ambassador from the Soviet Union, Katya Lycheva, visited the United States of America in 1986 with a peace mission. This girl was entrusted with the mission to become a symbol of the "Soviet peace-loving policy", and her image was created after the image of the deceased American Samantha Smith.

Her fame was short-lived. At first, Katya starred in children's films, was surrounded by journalists during her trip to America, who recorded her every step: "Katya Lycheva makes paper pigeons", "Katya Lycheva participates in a press conference", "Katya Lycheva meets with schoolchildren". An athlete, a Komsomol member, a beauty, who also knows English. But when the media stopped writing about the child diplomat, Katya Lycheva was forgotten. She emigrated to France, graduated from the Sorbonne and, although she continues to engage in international projects, she avoids communicating with journalists.

The cult of Alice Selezneva appeared thanks to the efforts of writer Kir Bulychev and director Roman Kachanov,who also gave the world Cheburashka. An "unearthly" girl with big eyes and a special, warm look. The roles of Alice in the movie were played by Natalia Guseva and Katya Prizhbilyak.

The works in which Alice acts were created for 40 years, and the author, by his own admission, did not follow any thoughtful "chronology of the future", describing the adventures of his heroine. Alice was not just a girl, but the first girl who managed to visit space and Atlantis. The unusual fate of the girl, her adventures gave rise to a whole layer of cultural layers that were far from the original image. The popularity of Alice is also emphasized by the fact that jokes about her and comic couplets began to appear in the people.

Eight-month-old Elena Gerinas has been the emblem of the famous Russian chocolate "Alyonka"for more than half a century. But there could be a Vasnetsovskaya "Alyonushka", for example. But the image of a trusting face in a headscarf of the daughter of photographer Alexander Gerinas won the competition, announced in 1964 as "Red October". Before that, a photo of "Alyonka" with wide-open eyes and rosy cheeks graced the cover of the first issue of the magazine "Health" in 1962.

Little Elena had brown eyes and a slightly different oval face, and the final image that appeared on the chocolate wrapper was created by the artist N. Maslov. By the way, Elena Gerinas herself does not receive any fee for using the image of her face on the most famous Russian chocolate for more than fifty years. In February 2000, she claimed her copyright as the heiress to this image, but the court, which lasted more than two years, ruled not in her favor.