Valentina Iovovna Dmitryeva () (May 10, 1859 – February 18, 1947) was a Russian/Soviet writer, teacher, medical doctor and revolutionary. Early life Dmitryeva was born in the village of Voronino, in the Saratov Governorate of the Russian Empire, where her father was a serf. He had been sent to an agricultural school by his master and was subsequently made the overseer of his master's estate. Her mother, Anna passed on her love of literature to Dmitryeva. After the Emancipation reform of 1861 the family was reduced to poverty and a transient existence. As a girl, Dmitryeva read everything she could find, from borrowed books to discarded newspapers. She kept a diary, using scraps of paper and old envelopes. She maintained the diary from the age of 10 to 23, when it was confiscated in a police search. The family eventually went to live in the household of Dmitryeva's maternal grandfather. As a teenage girl in her grandfather's home, she was confined to the traditional role of girls in Russian society of the time, limiting her to household tasks such as sewing and cooking, while her brother was sent to study with the son of a rich landowner. She was able to study secretly using books given to her by her brother's tutor. In 1873 she was admitted to the Tambov Girl's Secondary School. She worked her way through school by doing tutoring jobs, and with the help of one of her teachers. She graduated in 1877. By the time of her graduation she had become radicalized, and was writing reviews of works by leading critical thinkers like Nikolay Mikhaylovsky, Gleb Uspensky and Nikolay Dobrolyubov for her reading and discussion group in Tambov. Career After graduating she took a job as a teacher in a village school, one of the few positions open to women, and published articles in the press about the poor state of public education. She was dismissed from her post after writing a critical letter to the authorities, and prohibited from teaching. Unable to teach, she decided to pursue a medical career. She entered the Women's Medical Courses in Saint Petersburg in 1878. This program owed its existence to the influence of the Minister of War Dmitry Milyutin, who was an advocate of medical education for women. Dmitryeva spent almost as much time aiding revolutionary activists as she did on her studies, allowing her room to be