A.A. Grishchenko and samizdat of literary and creative circle Pachelma railway secondary school No. 37

The rare collection of poems «Wonderful Garden», printed in 1940 in the village of Pachelma, Penza region, by the printing house of the newspaper «Stalinskiy Put’», has a prehistory, which is connected with the activity of the teacher-activist Alexei Alexeyevich Grishchenko. This article deals with the publishing experiments of the literary and creative circle of Pachelma railway school No. 37, which was organised on his initiative and produced handwritten magazines with books. The fate of A.A. Grishchenko and some of his pupils is traced, the connection of the educator with the outstanding Soviet pedagogue, corresponding member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the USSR K.N. Sokolov, who worked in the same school as a biology teacher, is shown.