Mariya Sergeenko

Maria Efimovna Sergeyenko was a Soviet philologist, classical scholar, Doctor of Philological Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences, and a specialist in the agriculture of Ancient Italy.

She was born into the family of a civil servant in Novozybkov, Chernigov Governorate; her mother came from the noble Krynitsky family. She spent her childhood in her grandfather’s estate. She graduated from the Chernihiv Ministry Gymnasium.

In 1910 she came to St. Petersburg. She entered the History and Philology Department of the Higher Women’s Courses, where she studied classical and general history. She took part in the seminars of M. I. Rostovtsev and F. F. Zelinsky, whom she considered her teachers. She passed the state examinations in classical philology in 1916. During her studies she began teaching Latin at L. S. Tagantseva’s gymnasium and at Princess Obolenskaya’s gymnasium.

She taught at girls’ gymnasiums and at Saratov University.

In 1929, after the suppression of the academic staff at Saratov University, she returned to Leningrad, where she worked at the State Public Library and at the First Leningrad Medical Institute (first as a teacher, then as head of the Department of Latin).

She was one of the authors of a Latin-Russian botanical dictionary compiled by the All-Russian Institute of Plant Industry on the initiative of N. I. Vavilov.

She worked at the Russian Public Library (1931–1934) and at the Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the USSR Academy of Sciences (from 1932).

During the blockade of Leningrad she remained in the besieged city. She later wrote memoirs about the blockade. From 1941 to 1945 she worked on the translation of Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions. The first publication of Confessions in M. E. Sergeyenko’s translation appeared in the collection Theological Works, no. 19, in 1978. It was subsequently reissued several times, in 1992, 2003, and later.