Prilezhaeva, Mariia Pavlovna

Born June 9 (22), 1903, in Yaroslavl. Soviet Russian writer. Member of the CPSU since 1952.

Prilezhaeva graduated from the pedagogical department of the Second Moscow University in 1929 and became a schoolteacher. Her first novella, This Year (1941), is about schoolchildren. She wrote many books on the life of the young V. I. Lenin, including The Beginning (1957), The Astonishing Year (1967), and Three Weeks of Peace (1967). She also wrote a fictionalized biography of Lenin for children, The Life of Lenin (1970, N. K. Krupskaia State Prize of the RSFSR, 1971).

Other novellas by Prilezhaeva include From the Banks of the Medveditsa (1955) and Under the Northern Sky (1959), about the childhood and youth of M. I. Kalinin. She also wrote a fictionalized journalistic work for children, At the Twenty-fourth Congress (1971). Her works have been translated into the languages of the peoples of the USSR and into other foreign languages.

Prilezhaeva has been awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and medals.