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The most famous and richest people of the Russian Empire

Ryabushkin’s painting, of course, is late, but perfectly illustrates what is said below. The difference between the older sister and brother is 15-18 years, no less. The mother of the family is made up in such a way that it is difficult to determine her age: maybe thirty-something, maybe well over forty.

I will continue to debunk the myth that in the past everyone got married and had children very early, and by the age of 35 they turned into decrepit old people. This time we have Russian merchants 17-per. floor. 18th centuries
The age difference between parents and children of thirty years or more among Russian merchants and townspeople of that time was not the exception, but the norm. Here, for example, are the Vladimir merchants Stoletovs: in the dynastic branch, the founders of which were Larion Olekseev and his wife Evdokia, the generation spans approximately 35 to 40 years. The discrepancies are due to the fact that the exact years of birth of Larion and Evdokia are unknown - he was born either c. 1620/1625, or in 1630, she - in 1625 or 1631. This is due to the fact that the age was often indicated inaccurately, especially the age of elderly people. The aforementioned Evdokia lived at least until 1721, when she was no less than 90 years old, although already in a document of 1715 she was called ninety years old.
The eldest (of the known) son of this couple - Ivan was born either in 1655 or in 1666, the next oldest child - also Ivan - in 1669, the youngest - again, of the known - Mikhailo - in 1673, at the time of his The mother was either 42 or 48 years old at birth. The last figure does not look very likely, but is by no means impossible. So, for example, Mikhaila Larionovich’s wife, Solomeya Gavrilovna, gave birth to her last child, Ivan, at the age of 49 (in 1724), and in this case nothing is known about discrepancies in the dates of birth.
Men are usually somewhat older than their wives, sometimes much older. (So, the son of Mikhail and Solomeya, Fedor, was born in 1695, and his wife, Avdotya, in 1717. Perhaps this is not Fedor’s first marriage, since their son, Andrei, was born in 1748, when Fedor was already 53 years old). But in some cases, wives are older than husbands. So, Maxim Mikhailovich Stoletov was born in 1700, and his wife, Marfa Ivanovna, in 1692 (Their eldest daughter, Ulyana, was born in 1732).
There is not a single case in the Stoletovs’ pedigree where the difference between parents and children was less than 20 years. This does not mean that there were no early marriages at all. For example, the wife of Yakim Ivanovich Stoletov, Matrona, was only 16 years old in 1715 (Yakim himself was 25), but the eldest of their children mentioned in the pedigree, Katerina and Yakim, were born only in 1732, when Matrona was 33 years old. It is possible that there were children born between 1715 and 1732, but there is no information about them (we can assume that they died in infancy).
Based on materials from an article by O.N. Suslina "The Stoletovs in the 17th century"(Research materials. Collection No. 17: Scientific and practical conference December 13-14, 2010 / Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve. Vladimir, 2011)

Forbes magazine has been publishing its famous "richest lists" since 1918 - but it would be interesting to look at such a list from 1818 or even 1618.

There is no doubt: Russians would occupy a prominent place in it. The conquest of Siberia, victory in the Northern War, beef Stroganoff, tea with honey and the Tretyakov Gallery - at the expense of the Russian oligarchs of the distant past.

1. Stroganov, Anika Fedorovich

Place and time: Northern Urals, 16th century

How he got rich: salt production and supply

...Somehow, at the end of the 15th century, the Novgorod merchant Fyodor Stroganov settled on Vychegda near Veliky Ustyug, and his son Anika opened a saltworks there in 1515. In those days, salt, or rather brine, was pumped from wells like oil and evaporated in huge frying pans - menial work, but necessary. By 1558, Anika had succeeded so much that Ivan the Terrible gave him huge lands on the Kama River, where Russia’s first industrial giant, Solikamsk, was already thriving. Anika became richer than the tsar himself, and when his possessions were plundered by the Tatars, he decided not to stand on ceremony: he summoned the fiercest thugs and the most dashing ataman from the Volga, armed him and sent him to Siberia to sort things out. The ataman’s name was Ermak, and when the news of his campaign reached the tsar, who did not want a new war at all, it was no longer possible to stop the conquest of Siberia. Even after Anika, the Stroganovs remained the richest people in Russia, sort of aristocrats from industry, owners of industries, guest houses, trade routes... In the 18th century they received the nobility. The Stroganov barons' hobby was finding talent among their serfs: one of these “finds” was Andrei Voronikhin, who studied in St. Petersburg and built the Kazan Cathedral there. Sergei Stroganov opened an art school in 1825, where even peasant children were accepted - and who now does not know “Stroganovka”? In the 17th century, the Stroganovs created their own icon painting style, and in the 18th century, an architectural style, in which only 6 churches were built, but they cannot be confused with anything. And even “beefstraganoff” is called that for a reason: one of the Stroganovs served this dish to guests in his Odessa salon.

1. - All of Siberia.


2. - Architectural ensembles of Usolye and Ilyinsky (Perm region) - the “capitals” of the Stroganov Empire.


3. - Churches in the “Stroganov Baroque” style in Solvychegodsk, Ustyuzhna, Nizhny Novgorod, Trinity-Sergius Lavra.


4. - Icons of the “Stroganov school” in many churches and museums.


5. - Stroganov Palace and Kazan Cathedral on Nevsky Prospekt.


6. - Moscow State Art and Industry Academy named after. S.G. Stroganov.


7. - Beef Stroganoff is one of the most popular dishes of Russian cuisine.

2. Demidovs, Nikita Demidovich and Akinfiy Nikitich

Ill. Demidov Nikita Demidovich

Place and time: Tula and the Middle Urals, XVIII century

How they got rich: ferrous metallurgy

At the end of the 17th century, Peter I often visited Tula - after all, he was going to fight with invincible Sweden, and weapons were made in Tula. There he became friends with the gunsmith Nikita Demidych Antufiev, appointed him chief of metals and sent him to the Urals, where Nikita founded the Nevyansk plant in 1701. Sweden then produced almost half of the metal in Europe - and Russia began to produce even more by the 1720s. Dozens of factories grew up in the Urals, the largest and most modern in the world at that time, other merchants and the state came there, and Nikita received the nobility and the surname Demidov. His son Akinfiy succeeded even more, and throughout the 18th century Russia remained the world leader in iron production and, accordingly, had the strongest army. Serfs worked in the Ural factories, machines were powered by water wheels, and metal was exported along rivers. Some of the Demidovs joined the classical aristocracy: for example, Grigory Demidov established the first botanical garden in Russia in Solikamsk, and Nikolai Demidov also became the Italian Count of San Donato.

What Russia has left as a legacy:

1. - Victory in the Northern War, St. Petersburg and the Baltic Sea.


2. - Gornozavodskoy Ural is the main industrial region of the USSR and Russia.


3. - Rudny Altai is the main supplier of silver in the Russian Empire, the “ancestor” of the coal Kuzbass.


4. - Nevyansk is the “capital” of the Demidov Empire. For the first time in the world, the Nevyansk Inclined Tower used reinforcement, a lightning rod and a truss roof.


5. - Nizhny Tagil has been an industrial giant for all three hundred years of its history, where the Cherepanov brothers built the first Russian steam locomotive.


6. - St. Nicholas-Zaretskaya Church in Tula is the family necropolis of the Demidovs.


7. - The Botanical Garden in Solikamsk is the first in Russia, created according to the consultations of Carl Linnaeus.

3. Perlov, Vasily Alekseevich

How he got rich: tea import

Why do they say “tea” in Russian, and “ti” in English? The British entered China from the south, and the Russians from the north, and so the pronunciation of the same hieroglyph differed at different ends of the Celestial Empire. In addition to the Great Silk Road, there was also the Great Tea Road, which since the 17th century ran through Siberia, after the border Kyakhta, coinciding with the Siberian Highway. And it is no coincidence that Kyakhta was once called the “city of millionaires” - the tea trade was very profitable, and despite the high cost, tea was loved in Russia even before Peter I. Many merchants got rich from the tea trade - such as the Gribushins in Kungur. But the Moscow merchants Perlovs took the tea business to a completely different level: the founder of the dynasty, tradesman Ivan Mikhailovich, joined the merchant guild in 1797, his son Alexei opened the first tea shop in 1807, and finally in the 1860s Vasily Perlov founded the Tea Trade Association, growing into a real empire. He had dozens of stores throughout the country, he built the famous Tea House on Myasnitskaya, but most importantly, by establishing imports by sea and catching on to the railways in time, he made tea accessible to all segments of the population, including peasants.

What Russia has left as a legacy:

1. - Tea culture, which has become an integral part of Russian everyday life.


2. - As a result - Russian samovar and Russian porcelain.


3. - The Tea House on Myasnitskaya is one of the most beautiful buildings in Moscow.

4. Putilov, Nikolai Ivanovich

Place and time: St. Petersburg, XIX century

How he got rich: metallurgy and heavy engineering

Just as without the Hermitage and Isaac, St. Petersburg cannot be imagined without the Putilov (Kirov) plant. The largest plant in the Russian Empire. It all started with the fact that during the Crimean War, the talented engineer Nikolai Putilov was introduced to Nicholas I and received from him an almost impossible order: to build a fleet of screw steamships at the St. Petersburg shipyards for the next navigation. Russia did not have such ships at that time, and the only possible “teacher” - Britain - smashed Russia to smithereens in Crimea. But Putilov performed a miracle worse than the Soviet atomic bomb: when the ice melted in the Baltic, Russia already had 64 gunboats and 14 corvettes. After the war, the engineer went into business, modernized several factories in Finland and St. Petersburg, and in 1868 founded his own factory on the outskirts of the capital. He brought Russian metallurgy to a different level, reducing imports of steel, alloys, rails and heavy machinery significantly. His factory built machine tools, ships, guns, locomotives, and carriages. His last project was the new St. Petersburg port on Gutuevsky Island, which he did not live to see completed.

What Russia has left as a legacy:

1. - Kirov Plant and Northern Shipyard in St. Petersburg.


2. - St. Petersburg Sea Port in its current form.

5. Tretyakov, Pavel Mikhailovich

Place and time: Moscow, XIX century

How he got rich: textile industry

Everyone knows this story from the school curriculum: a rich Moscow merchant with an unhappy family history collected Russian art, which was of little interest to anyone in those days, and he accumulated such a collection that he built his own gallery. Well, the Tretyakov Gallery is perhaps the most famous Russian museum now. In the Moscow province of the 19th century, a special breed of rich people developed: all as a selection - from old merchants, or even rich peasants; half are Old Believers; all owned textile factories; many were philanthropists, and no less famous here are Savva Mamontov with his creative evenings in Abramtsevo, the Morozov dynasty, another collector of paintings (though not Russian) Sergei Shchukin and others... Most likely, the fact is that they came to high society straight from people.

What Russia has left as a legacy:

1. - Tretyakov Gallery.


2. - Numerous ancient factories in Moscow and the Moscow region.

6. Nobels, Ludwig Emmanuilovich, Robert Emmanuilovich and Alfred Emmanuilovich

Ill. Nobel Ludwig Emmanuilovich

Place and time: Baku, XIX century

How they got rich: explosives production, oil production

The Nobels are not entirely “Russian” characters: this family came to St. Petersburg from Sweden. But they changed Russia, and through it the whole world: after all, oil became the Nobels’ main business. People knew about oil for a long time, they extracted it in wells, but they didn’t really know what to do with this nasty thing and burned it in ovens like firewood. The flywheel of the oil era began to gain momentum in the 19th century - in America, in Austrian Galicia and in the Russian Caucasus: for example, in 1823, the world's first oil refinery was built in Mozdok, and in 1847, the world's first well was drilled near Baku. The Nobels, who became rich in the production of weapons and explosives, came to Baku in 1873 - then Baku industries lagged behind Austrian and American ones due to their inaccessibility. In order to compete with the Americans on equal terms, the Nobels had to optimize the process as much as possible, and in Baku in 1877-78, one after another, the attributes of modernity began to appear for the first time in the world: the tanker “Zaroaster” (1877), an oil pipeline and oil storage facility (1878), the motor ship “Vandal” "(1902). The Nobel oil refineries produced so much kerosene that it became a consumer product. A gift from heaven for the Nobels was the invention of the German diesel engine, the mass production of which they established in St. Petersburg. Branobel (“Nobel Brothers Petroleum Production Partnership”) was not much different from the oil companies of our time and led the world into a new oil era. Alfred Nobel was tormented by his conscience for the invention of dynamite in 1868, and he bequeathed his grandiose fortune as a fund for the “Peace Prize,” which is awarded in Stockholm every year to this day.

What is left as a legacy for Russia and the world:

1. - The oil era with all its pros, cons and features


2. - Pipelines, oil storage tanks, tankers.


3. - Motor ships and diesel-electric ships.


4. - Industrial (not consumer) thermal power engineering.


5. - Dynamite (invention of Alfred Nobel, 1868)


6. - Nobel Prize - she owes 12% of her capital to Branobel

7. Vtorovs, Alexander Fedorovich and Nikolai Alexandrovich

Ill. Vtorov Nikolay Alexandrovich

Place and time: Siberia, turn of the 19th-20th centuries

How they got rich: services sector

...In 1862, the Kostroma man Vtorov came to merchant Irkutsk, and almost immediately suddenly acquired good capital: some say he married successfully, others say he robbed someone or beat someone at cards. With this money, he opened a store and began supplying manufactured goods from the Nizhny Novgorod Fair to Irkutsk. Nothing foreshadowed that this would become the largest fortune in Tsarist Russia - about $660 million at current exchange rates by the beginning of the 1910s. But Vtorov created such an attribute of modernity as a chain supermarket: under the common brand “Vtorov’s Passage”, huge stores equipped with the latest technology with a single structure, assortment and prices appeared in dozens of Siberian, and then not only Siberian, cities. The next step is the creation of a network of “Europe” hotels, again made to a single standard. After thinking a little more, Vtorov decided to promote the business in the outback - and now the project for a store with an inn for villages is ready. From trade, Vtorov moved to industry, founding a plant in the Moscow region with the futuristic name “Electrostal” and buying up metallurgical and chemical plants almost in bulk. And his son Nikolai, who founded the first business center in Russia (Business Dvor), most likely would have increased his father’s capital... but a revolution happened. The richest man in Russia was shot dead by an unknown assailant in his office, and his funeral was personally blessed by Lenin as “the last meeting of the bourgeoisie.”

What Russia has left as a legacy:

1. - Supermarkets, business centers and chain establishments.


2. - Dozens of “Vtorov’s passages”, which in many cities are the most beautiful buildings.


3. - Business yard on Kitai-Gorod.

The merchant class is one of the classes of the Russian state of the 18th-20th centuries and was the third class after the nobility and clergy. In 1785, the “Charter of Grant to the Cities” defined the rights and class privileges of the merchants. In accordance with this document, the merchants were exempted from the poll tax, as well as corporal punishment. And some merchant names also come from recruiting. They also had the right to freely move from one volost to another in accordance with the “passport privilege”. Honorary citizenship was also adopted to encourage merchants.
To determine the class status of a merchant, his property qualification was taken. Since the end of the 18th century, there were 3 guilds, each of them was determined by the amount of capital. Every year the merchant paid an annual guild fee amounting to 1% of the total capital. Thanks to this, a random person could not become a representative of a certain class.
At the beginning of the 18th century. trade privileges of the merchants began to take shape. In particular, “trading peasants” began to appear. Very often, several peasant families chipped in and paid the guild fee to the 3rd guild, thereby, in particular, exempting their sons from recruitment.
The most important thing in studying the lives of people is the study of their way of life, but historians have taken up this in earnest not so long ago. And in this area, the merchants provided an unlimited amount of material for recognizing Russian culture.

Responsibilities and features.

In the 19th century, the merchant class remained fairly closed, retaining its rules, as well as responsibilities, features and rights. Outsiders were not really allowed there. True, there were cases when people from other classes joined this environment, usually from wealthy peasants or those who did not want or were unable to follow the spiritual path.
The private life of merchants in the 19th century remained an island of ancient Old Testament life, where everything new was perceived, at least suspiciously, and traditions were followed and considered unshakable, which must be carried out religiously from generation to generation. Of course, to develop their business, merchants did not shy away from social entertainment and visited theaters, exhibitions, and restaurants, where they made new acquaintances necessary for the development of their business. But upon returning from such an event, the merchant exchanged his fashionable tuxedo for a shirt and striped trousers and, surrounded by his large family, sat down to drink tea near a huge polished copper samovar.
A distinctive feature of the merchants was piety. Church attendance was compulsory; missing services was considered a sin. It was also important to pray at home. Of course, religiosity was closely intertwined with charity - it was merchants who provided assistance to various monasteries, cathedrals and churches most of all.
Thrift in everyday life, sometimes reaching extreme stinginess, is one of the distinguishing features in the life of merchants. Expenses for trade were common, but spending extra on one’s own needs was considered completely unnecessary and even sinful. It was quite normal for younger family members to wear the older ones’ clothes. And we can observe such savings in everything - both in the maintenance of the house and in the modesty of the table.

House.

Zamoskvoretsky was considered a merchant district of Moscow. It was here that almost all the merchants' houses in the city were located. Buildings were built, as a rule, using stone, and each merchant house was surrounded by a plot with a garden and smaller buildings, these included baths, stables and outbuildings. Initially, there had to be a bathhouse on the site, but later it was often abolished, and people washed in specially built public institutions. Barns served to store utensils and, in general, everything that was necessary for horses and housekeeping.
Stables were always built to be strong, warm and always so that there were no drafts. Horses were protected because of their high cost, and so they took care of the horses’ health. At that time, they were kept in two types: hardy and strong for long trips and thoroughbred, graceful for city trips.
The merchant's house itself consisted of two parts - residential and front. The front part could consist of several living rooms, luxuriously decorated and furnished, although not always tastefully. In these rooms, merchants held social receptions for the benefit of their business.
In the rooms there were always several sofas and sofas upholstered in fabric of soft colors - brown, blue, burgundy. Portraits of the owners and their ancestors were hung on the walls of the state rooms, and beautiful dishes (often part of the dowry of the owner's daughters) and all sorts of expensive trinkets delighted the eye in the elegant displays. Rich merchants had a strange custom: all the window sills in the front rooms were lined with bottles of different shapes and sizes with homemade meads, liqueurs and the like. Due to the impossibility of frequently ventilating the rooms, and the vents gave poor results, the air was freshened by various home-grown methods.
The living rooms located at the back of the house were much more modestly furnished and their windows overlooked the backyard. To freshen the air, bunches of fragrant herbs, often brought from monasteries, were hung in them and sprinkled with holy water before hanging them.
The situation with the so-called amenities was even worse; there were toilets in the courtyard, they were poorly built, and were rarely repaired.

Food.

Food in general is an important indicator of national culture, and it was the merchants who were the guardians of culinary culture.
In the merchant environment, it was customary to eat 4 times a day: at nine in the morning - morning tea, lunch - at about 2 o'clock, evening tea - at five in the evening, dinner at nine in the evening.
The merchants ate heartily; tea was served with many types of pastries with dozens of fillings, various types of jam and honey, and store-bought marmalade.
Lunch always contained the first thing (ear, borscht, cabbage soup, etc.), then several types of hot dishes, and after that several snacks and sweets. During Lent, only meatless dishes were prepared, and on permitted days, fish dishes were prepared.

Russian merchants have always been special. Merchants and industrialists were recognized as the most wealthy class of the Russian Empire. These were brave, talented, generous and inventive people, patrons of art and connoisseurs of art.

Bakhrushins

They come from the merchants of the city of Zaraysk, Ryazan province, where their family can be traced through scribe books until 1722. By profession, the Bakhrushins were “prasols”: they drove cattle in droves from the Volga region to big cities. The cattle sometimes died on the road, the skins were torn off, taken to the city and sold to tanneries - this is how the history of their own business began.

Alexey Fedorovich Bakhrushin moved to Moscow from Zaraysk in the thirties of the last century. The family moved on carts, with all their belongings, and the youngest son Alexander, the future honorary citizen of the city of Moscow, was transported in a laundry basket. Alexey Fedorovich - became the first Moscow merchant Bakhrushin (he has been included in the Moscow merchant class since 1835).

Alexander Alekseevich Bakhrushin, the same honorary citizen of Moscow, was the father of the famous city figure Vladimir Alexandrovich, collectors Sergei and Alexei Alexandrovich, and the grandfather of Professor Sergei Vladimirovich.

Speaking of collectors, this well-known passion for “gathering” was a distinctive feature of the Bakhrushin family. The collections of Alexey Petrovich and Alexey Alexandrovich are especially worth noting. The first collected Russian antiquities and, mainly, books. According to his spiritual will, he left the library to the Rumyantsev Museum, and porcelain and antiques to the Historical Museum, where there were two halls named after him. They said about him that he was terribly stingy, since “every Sunday he goes to Sukharevka and bargains like a Jew.” But he can hardly be judged for this, because every collector knows: the most pleasant thing is to find for yourself a truly valuable thing, the merits of which others were not aware of.

The second, Alexey Alexandrovich, was a great theater lover, chaired the Theater Society for a long time and was very popular in theater circles. Therefore, the Theater Museum became the world's only richest collection of everything that had anything to do with the theater.

Both in Moscow and in Zaraysk they were honorary citizens of the city - a very rare honor. During my stay in the City Duma there were only two honorary citizens of the city of Moscow: D. A. Bakhrushin and Prince V. M. Golitsyn, the former mayor.

Quote: “One of the largest and richest companies in Moscow is considered to be the Trading House of the Bakhrushin brothers. They have a leather and cloth business. The owners are still young people, with higher education, well-known philanthropists who donate hundreds of thousands. They conduct their business, albeit on new principles - that is, using the latest words of science, but according to ancient Moscow customs. Their offices and reception rooms, for example, make them want a lot." "New time".

Mamontovs

The Mamontov family originates from the Zvenigorod merchant Ivan Mamontov, about whom practically nothing is known, except that the year of birth was 1730, and that he had a son, Fyodor Ivanovich (1760). Most likely, Ivan Mamontov was engaged in farming and made a good fortune for himself, so his sons were already rich people. One can guess about his charitable activities: the monument on his grave in Zvenigorod was erected by grateful residents for the services provided to them in 1812.

Fyodor Ivanovich had three sons - Ivan, Mikhail and Nikolai. Mikhail, apparently, was not married, in any case, he did not leave any offspring. The other two brothers were the ancestors of two branches of the venerable and numerous Mammoth family.

Quote: “Brothers Ivan and Nikolai Fedorovich Mamontov came to Moscow rich people. Nikolai Fedorovich bought a large and beautiful house with an extensive garden on Razgulay. By this time he had a large family.” ("P. M. Tretyakov". A. Botkin).

The Mamontov youth, the children of Ivan Fedorovich and Nikolai Fedorovich, were well educated and diversely gifted. Savva Mamontov’s natural musicality especially stood out, which played a big role in his adult life.

Savva Ivanovich will nominate Chaliapin; will make Mussorgsky, rejected by many experts, popular; will create a huge success in his theater with Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “Sadko”. He would be not only a patron of the arts, but also an adviser: the artists received valuable instructions from him on issues of makeup, gesture, costume and even singing.

One of the remarkable undertakings in the field of Russian folk art is closely connected with the name of Savva Ivanovich: the famous Abramtsevo. In new hands it was revived and soon became one of the most cultural corners of Russia.

Quote: “The Mamontovs became famous in a wide variety of fields: both in the field of industry, and, perhaps, especially in the field of art. The Mamontov family was very large, and representatives of the second generation were no longer as rich as their parents, and in the third, the fragmentation of funds "It went even further. The origin of their wealth was tax farming, which brought them closer to the well-known Kokorev. Therefore, when they appeared in Moscow, they immediately entered the rich merchant environment." (“The Dark Kingdom”, N. Ostrovsky).

The founder of this one of the oldest trading companies in Moscow was Vasily Petrovich Shchukin, a native of the city of Borovsk, Kaluga province. At the end of the seventies of the 18th century, Vasily Petrovich established trade in manufactured goods in Moscow and continued it for fifty years. His son, Ivan Vasilyevich, founded the Trading House “I. V. Shchukin with his sons” The sons are Nikolai, Peter, Sergei and Dmitry Ivanovich.
The trading house conducted extensive trade: goods were sent to all corners of Central Russia, as well as to Siberia, the Caucasus, the Urals, Central Asia and Persia. In recent years, the Trading House began to sell not only calicoes, scarves, linen, clothing and paper fabrics, but also wool, silk and linen products.

The Shchukin brothers are known as great connoisseurs of art. Nikolai Ivanovich was a lover of antiquities: his collection contained many ancient manuscripts, lace, and various fabrics. He built a beautiful building in the Russian style for the collected items on Malaya Gruzinskaya. According to his will, his entire collection, along with the house, became the property of the Historical Museum.

Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin occupies a special place among Russian nugget collectors. We can say that all French painting of the beginning of the current century: Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse, some of their predecessors, Renoir, Cezanne, Monet, Degas - was in Shchukin’s collection.

Ridicule, rejection, misunderstanding by society of the work of this or that master did not have the slightest meaning for him. Often Shchukin bought paintings for a penny, not out of his stinginess and not out of a desire to oppress the artist - simply because they were not for sale and there was not even a price for them.

Ryabushinsky

From the Rebushinskaya settlement of the Pafnutyevo-Borovsky monastery in the Kaluga province in 1802, Mikhail Yakovlev “arrived” to the Moscow merchants. He traded in Kholshchovoy Row in Gostiny Dvor. But he went bankrupt during the Patriotic War of 1812, like many merchants. His revival as an entrepreneur was facilitated by his transition to the “schism.” In 1820, the founder of the business joined the community of the Rogozhskoe cemetery - the Moscow stronghold of the Old Believers of the “priestly sense”, to which the richest merchant families of the mother throne belonged.

Mikhail Yakovlevich takes the surname Rebushinsky (that’s how it was spelled then) in honor of his native settlement and joins the merchant class. He now sells “paper goods”, runs several weaving factories in Moscow and Kaluga province, and leaves his children a capital of more than 2 million rubles. Thus, the stern and devout Old Believer, who wore a common people's caftan and worked as a “master” in his manufactories, laid the foundation for the future prosperity of the family.

Quote: “I have always been struck by one feature - perhaps the characteristic feature of the whole family - this is internal family discipline. Not only in banking matters, but also in public affairs, everyone was assigned his own place according to the established rank, and in first place was the elder brother, with whom others were considered and, in a certain sense, subordinate to him." ("Memoirs", P. Buryshkin).

The Ryabushinskys were famous collectors: icons, paintings, art objects, porcelain, furniture... It is not surprising that Nikolai Ryabushinsky, “the dissolute Nikolasha” (1877-1951), chose the world of art as his career. An extravagant lover of living in grand style, he entered the history of Russian art as the editor-publisher of the luxurious literary and artistic almanac “The Golden Fleece,” published in 1906-1909. The almanac, under the banner of “pure art,” managed to gather the best forces of the Russian “Silver Age”: A. Blok, A. Bely, V. Bryusov, among the “seekers of the golden fleece” were the artists M. Dobuzhinsky, P. Kuznetsov, E. Lanceray and many other. A. Benois, who collaborated with the magazine, assessed its publisher as “a most curious figure, not mediocre, in any case special.”

Demidovs

The founder of the Demidov merchant dynasty, Nikita Demidovich Antufiev, better known under the name Demidov (1656-1725), was a Tula blacksmith and advanced under Peter I, receiving vast lands in the Urals for the construction of metallurgical plants. Nikita Demidovich had three sons: Akinfiy, Gregory and Nikita, among whom he distributed all his wealth.

In the famous Altai mines, which owe their discovery to Akinfiy Demidov, ores rich in gold and silver content, native silver and horny silver ore were found in 1736.

His eldest son Prokopiy Akinfievich paid little attention to the management of his factories, which, despite his intervention, generated huge income. He lived in Moscow, and surprised the townspeople with his eccentricities and expensive undertakings. Prokopiy Demidov also spent a lot on charity: 20,000 rubles to establish a hospital for poor mothers at the St. Petersburg Orphanage, 20,000 rubles to Moscow University for scholarships for the poorest students, 5,000 rubles to the main public school in Moscow.

Tretyakovs

They came from an old but poor merchant family. Elisey Martynovich Tretyakov, the great-grandfather of Sergei and Pavel Mikhailovich, arrived in Moscow in 1774 from Maloyarovslavets as a seventy-year-old man with his wife and two sons, Zakhar and Osip. In Maloyaroslavets, the Tretyakov merchant family existed since 1646.
The history of the Tretyakov family essentially boils down to the biography of two brothers, Pavel and Sergei Mikhailovich. During their lifetime, they were united by genuine family love and friendship. After their death, they were forever remembered as the creators of the gallery named after the brothers Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov.

Both brothers continued their father's business, first trading, then industrial. They were linen workers, and flax in Russia has always been revered as an indigenous Russian product. Slavophile economists (like Kokorev) always praised flax and contrasted it with foreign American cotton.

This family was never considered one of the richest, although their commercial and industrial affairs were always successful. Pavel Mikhailovich spent huge amounts of money on creating his famous gallery and collecting his collection, sometimes to the detriment of the well-being of his own family.

Quote: “With a guide and a map in his hands, zealously and carefully, he reviewed almost all European museums, moving from one big capital to another, from one small Italian, Dutch and German town to another. And he became a real, deep and subtle connoisseur painting". ("Russian Antiquity").

Soltadenkovs

They come from the peasants of the village of Prokunino, Kolomensky district, Moscow province. The founder of the Soldatenkov family, Yegor Vasilievich, has been listed in the Moscow merchant class since 1797. But this family became famous only in the half of the 19th century, thanks to Kuzma Terentievich.

He rented a shop in the old Gostiny Dvor, sold paper yarn, and was involved in discounting. Subsequently he became a major shareholder in a number of manufactories, banks and insurance companies.

Kuzma Soldatenkov had a large library and a valuable collection of paintings, which he bequeathed to the Moscow Rumyantsev Museum. This collection is one of the earliest in terms of its composition and the most remarkable in terms of its excellent and long existence.

But Soldatenkov’s main contribution to Russian culture is considered to be publishing. His closest collaborator in this area was the well-known Moscow city figure Mitrofan Shchepkin. Under the leadership of Shchepkin, many issues were published dedicated to the classics of economic science, for which special translations were made. This series of publications, called the Shchepkin Library, was a most valuable tool for students, but already in my time - the beginning of this century - many books became bibliographic rarities.

Regular version of the site

The sculptural effect of the risalits is also built on contrast. The heavy, large rustication of the lower floors is cut through by almost round windows, straightened from below, and entrance openings with a rounded top in the side projections. It creates the feeling of a grotto, a cave that promises treasure to everyone who enters. Initially, at the level of the third floor there were small balconies on the projections, which increased the heaviness of the first floors and the volume of the entire decorative plastic of the facade.

Above them are narrow, frequent vertical windows soaring upward. The upward thrust is also reinforced by the high figured attics of the three risalits.

The façade of the building is rich in stucco decoration. These are various ornaments of window frames, floral arrangements, intertwined ribbons, curls and cartouches. The most outstanding and rich part of the facade plastic is the central risalit. None of its windows are repeated; the high-rising rounded attic has an original shape. Interesting are the arched double windows of the upper floor, decorated with columns of tied tufts of tall broad-leaved grass. These windows are flanked by sculpted female half-busts in unusual headdresses and with snaking hair forming a bizarre knot on the chest.

During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, the façade of the building became very dilapidated. The sculptural decoration of the house suffered losses. Balconies, cartouches that decorated the completion of risalits, sculptures in the center of the third floor and other smaller elements were demolished. And in the 1930s, the openings of the side entrances were leveled. All this significantly violated the original plan of the architect and changed the pronounced sculptural appearance of the building. In 2010, an attic floor was added to the roof of the house, which destroyed the emotionality of the complex, uneven-high top line of the building.

The interior of the apartment building is luxurious. Entering the central front door, you encounter a continuation of the decorative elements of the facade. The alternating arches of the entrance enclose spherical vaults, entirely covered with very dense relief ornamental decoration, consisting of a scattering of multi-petal flower heads articulated with each other. They create a continuous decorative field, bringing a light, joyful mood to the front space.

Having passed through a suite of arches, you come out to a central staircase with a magnificent cast-iron grille that has retained its original appearance. Using her example, it is interesting to see how the purely structural elements of a forged lattice smoothly transform into the whimsically curved lines of a decorative pattern, so characteristic of the Art Nouveau style. Each step of the staircase along its entire length corresponds to the same repeating element of a stylized plant motif with a powerful shoot facing down and ending in a slightly blossoming flower bud.

But the real treasure, a true masterpiece of the interior decoration of the house, is the carved wooden ceiling with paintings in one of the current offices on the fourth floor. Its composition has a pronounced center with a round, strongly protruding element, characteristic of oriental art. Painted planes diverge symmetrically from it, alternating with convex carved elements. The central part of the ceiling is framed by a double border. The outermost one consists of square coffers filled with carved flowers, similar to those that decorate the ceiling of the front room. The main painting motifs and color scheme go back to the best examples of ancient Russian interior painting, presented in the tower palaces of the Moscow Kremlin and Kolomenskoye. One of the principles of Art Nouveau is a refined, harmonious combination of different eras and styles, giving rise to new images. But here the artist also added a more recognizable attribute of the style - images of owls, repeated four times around the central circle.

The surviving wooden ceiling is a unique work of art created by Art Nouveau masters of the early 20th century.

Apartment building with shops

The luxurious house on Myasnitskaya was again occupied by shops and offices. And as before, the main tenants were engineering, technical and industrial offices and firms. For a long time, the house on Myasnitskaya housed the machine-building and boiler warehouses of the Bromley Brothers Mechanical Works Society, one of the largest Russian machine-building firms. Brothers Edward and Friedrich Bromley were Englishmen who accepted Russian citizenship. In 1857, they opened a small workshop in Zamoskvorechye for the production of axes, saws, sickles and other agricultural implements. Expanding production, the brothers acquired territory from the Kaluga outpost and by the end of the 19th century were the owners of a large mechanical plant producing steam engines, machine tools, and equipment for city water supply systems. They knew the architect of the house, I.T. Baryutin, who, during the construction of the stands of the hippodrome, ordered the company cast iron and iron columns, beams, rafters, etc. Iron beams and fittings from the Bromley brothers' plant were also used in the construction of the Museum of Fine Arts (now the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts). During the First World War, the plant manufactured special machines for drilling and turning barrels, cylindering grenades, as well as cartridge holders and other equipment for military needs. At the end of 1916, a department for the production of automobile parts and engines was opened at the plant. One of the owners of the plant at that time, the son of Eduard Bromley, Yegor Eduardovich, created a gas engine. You could get acquainted with all the products of the plant and place an order at the address: Myasnitskaya, 18.

In 1918, the Bromley brothers’ plant was nationalized and renamed “Red Proletary”, and from 1951 - the Machine Tool Plant named after. A.I. Efremov, who worked successfully throughout the Soviet years.

Another major entrepreneur who kept an office in the Mishins’ house on Myasnitskaya was the Estonian nobleman Teofil Ivanovich Hagen.

He was the only representative in Russia selling American-made National cash registers, which were in enormous demand. The National devices were perfect both in terms of technical design and design. They consisted of four drawers that were opened with a specific key. An internal counter was installed on the back cover of the device, recording the number of openings and closings of the device. Cash registers were made from copper using wood, silver, nickel, and sometimes gold. They were decorated with rich engraving and painting. The quality of the American National devices was such that they served in Soviet trade until the 1960s.

In 1915, the Kauchuk Joint Stock Company, the third largest rubber products enterprise in terms of production volume and capacity, was transferred to Moscow from Riga. Their office was also located in the Mishins’ house.

Even the change of government, as a result of which Myasnitskaya was renamed Kirova Street, did not bring noticeable changes to the life of Mishin’s (already former) house. Until the 1930s, there were still technical institutions here. In particular, the technical office of the Krasny Metalist plant, which was located in Maryina Roshcha and was engaged in the repair of all kinds of machines and metal structures, as well as a workshop for the assembly and repair of sewing machines of the Gosshveymashina trust, the technical supervision of which was carried out by Pyotr Nikolaevich Starshinov.

There were shops on the ground floor with large windows. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Vegetables and Fruits store was located here. At one time, his display windows had a spectacular design: water flowed across the entire window glass, through which picturesquely arranged greens and vegetables looked especially fresh and attractive to the buyer. The remaining floors were occupied by departments of the Ministry of Chemical Industry, located in the neighboring building No. 20.

The building has been under the operational management of the Higher School of Economics since 2011.

Anastasia Solovyova
Art critic, historian of Moscow. Author of the multi-volume publication “Faces of Russian History: A Collection of Portraits”; director of the film-walk “From the Kremlin to Novodevichy” 1997; scientific editor of the book about Moscow “Lubyanka Triangle” (A.V. Kolosov, 2010). She studied and described the bells of Moscow. Guide of “Moscow That Doesn’t Exist”; one of the authors of the site "".