Ivan dmitrievich sytin - a native of the kostroma land - the largest book publisher in russia. The genius of commerce and the inspired scribe "I left school lazy"
Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin -
a native of the Kostroma land -
the largest book publisher in Russia.
During my life, I have believed and believe in one power that
helps me to overcome all the hardships of life ...
I believe in the future of Russian enlightenment,
into a Russian person, by virtue of light and knowledge.
I. D. Sytin
In the history of Russian book business, there was no figure more popular and more famous than Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin. Every fourth book published in Russia before the October Revolution was associated with his name, as well as the most widespread magazines and newspapers in the country. In total, over the years of his publishing activity, he published at least 500 million books, a huge figure, even by modern standards. Therefore, it can be said without exaggeration that all literate and illiterate Russia knew him. Millions of children learned to read in his alphabets and primers, millions of adults in the farthest corners of Russia, through his cheap editions, first got acquainted with the works of Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gogol and many other Russian classics.
Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin was born on February 5, 1851 in the village of Gnezdikovo, Soligalichsky district. Ivan was the eldest of four children of Dmitry Gerasimovich and Olga Alexandrovna Sytin.
His father came from economic peasants and, as the best student, was taken from the elementary school to the city for training in the volost clerks and was an exemplary senior clerk in the district all his life. Father's roots went to the village of Konteevo, Buysky district. He was an intelligent and capable man, therefore he was terribly burdened by the monotonous position, from time to time he drank with grief. In his memoirs, Sytin writes: “Parents, constantly in need of the bare essentials, paid little attention to us. I studied in a rural school, here, under the volost government. The textbooks were the Slavic alphabet, a clock, a psalter, and elementary arithmetic. The school was one-class, the teaching was complete carelessness, at times - strictness with the inclusion of punishments by flogging, kneeling on peas and slapping the head, for hours - kneeling in the corner. The teacher sometimes appeared drunk in the classroom. The result of all this was the complete licentiousness of the students and disregard for the lessons. I left school lazy and got disgusted with science and books ... ".
During one rather prolonged seizure, Dmitry Sytin was fired from his job. The family moved to Galich. Life has gotten better. Ivan's position also changed. He was entrusted to Uncle Vasily, a furrier. Together they went to a fair in Nizhny Novgorod to sell fur clothes. Ivan's business went well: he was a striker, helpful, worked hard, which served his uncle and the owner from whom they took the goods for sale. By the end of the fair, he received his first earnings of 25 rubles, and they wanted to "assign" him to Yelabuga as "boys for a painter". But my uncle advised my parents to wait with choosing a place. Vanya stayed at home for a year. And in the next fair season, the merchant for whom Ivan worked, noticed that the boy was doing well, and took him with him to Kolomna. From there, 15-year-old Ivan Sytin arrived in Moscow with a letter of recommendation to the merchant Sharapov, who held two trades at the Ilyinsky Gate - furs and books. By a lucky coincidence, Sharapov did not have a place in the fur shop, where Ivan was expected by well-wishers, and from September 14, 1866, Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin began counting down the time of serving the book.
It would seem that he is a man with three grades of education, with a complete disgust for science and books. What future awaits him? But thanks to his diligence and hard work, he was able to move to Moscow and already show himself there.
Not an easy path to fame begins with Ivan Dmitrievich in the bookshop of the Moscow merchant Pyotr Sharapov. The merchant was mainly engaged in furs, paid little attention to books, entrusting them to clerks. The book production consisted mainly of popular prints of religious content. Every year, small traders came to Sharapov for popular prints. Then they delivered book products across the Russian provinces along with household items and cheap jewelry.
Ivan sold books, and also ran on the water, brought firewood and cleaned the owner's boots. Sharapov looked closely at Ivan, and from the age of seventeen, Sytin began to accompany carts with popular prints, traded at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, and got to know the women better. Soon he became an assistant to the head of a shop in Nizhny Novgorod. He managed to create a whole network of offeni peddlers, the success exceeded all expectations.
1876 was a turning point in the life of the future book publisher. At the age of twenty-five, Sytin married the daughter of a Moscow pastry chef Evdokia Sokolova, receiving 4 thousand rubles as a dowry for her.
Ivan Dmitrievich and Evdokia Ivanovna Sytin with their children - Nikolai, Vasily, Vladimir and Maria.
With this money, as well as 3 thousand rubles, borrowed from Sharapov, in December 1876 he opened his lithograph near the Dorogomilovsky bridge. The enterprise was initially housed in three small rooms and had only one lithographic machine, on which prints were printed. The apartment was located nearby. Every morning Sytin cut the paintings himself, put them in bundles and took them to Sharapov's shop, where he continued to work. This lithograph was no different from many others located in the capital.
The opening of a small lithographic workshop is considered to be the moment of birth of the largest printing company MPO “First Exemplary Printing House”.
The Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 helped Sytin rise above the level of similar owners of popular print publishing houses. “On the day of the declaration of war,” he later recalled, “I ran to the Kuznetsky Most, bought a map of Bessarabia and Romania and told the master to copy a part of the map during the night, indicating the place where our troops crossed the Prut. At 5 o'clock in the morning the map was ready and put into the car with the inscription “For newspaper readers. Allowance ". The card was instantly sold out. Later, as the troops moved, the card also changed. For three months I traded alone.Nobody thought to interfere with me. " Thanks to this successful invention, Sytin's enterprise began to flourish - already in 1878 he paid off all debts and became the sovereign owner of the lithograph.
Ivan Dmitrievich from the first steps fought for the quality of the goods. He was also entrepreneurial and responsive to customer demand. He knew how to use any occasion. Lithographic pictures were in great demand. The merchants did not bargain in price, but in quantity. There was not enough goods for everyone.
After six years of hard work and search, Sytin's products were spotted at the All-Russian Industrial Exhibition in Moscow. Popular prints were exhibited here. Seeing them, the famous academician of painting Mikhail Botkin began to strongly advise Sytin to print copies of paintings by famous artists, to start replicating good reproductions. The case was new. It is difficult to say whether it will bring benefits or not. Ivan Dmitrievich took a chance. He felt that such "high-quality products will find their wide buyer."
Popular editions of I.D. Sytin.
The next year, Sytin bought his own house on Pyatnitskaya Street, moved his enterprise there and bought another lithographic machine. From that time on, his business began to expand rapidly.
For four years, he fulfilled Sharapov's orders in his lithograph under a contract and delivered printed editions to his bookstore. And on January 1, 1883, Sytin had his own bookstore of very modest size on Staraya Square. The trade went briskly.
From here, Sytyn's popular prints and books, packed in boxes, began their journey to remote corners of Russia. Often authors of publications appeared in the shop, L.N. Tolstoy, who was chatting with the women, was looking closely at the young owner. In February of the same year, the book-publishing company “I.D. Sytin and Co. ”. At the beginning, the books were not very tasteful. Their authors, in order to please the consumers of the Nikolsky market, did not neglect plagiarism, they subjected some works of the classics to “rework”.
I. D. Sytin and L.N. Tolstoy.
“By instinct and guesswork, I understood how far we were from real literature,” wrote Sytin. "But the traditions of the popular book trade were very tenacious and had to be broken with patience."
But in the fall of 1884, a handsome young man entered a shop on the Old Square. “My name is Chertkov,” he introduced himself and took out of his pocket three thin books and one manuscript. These were the stories of N. Leskov, I. Turgenev and Tolstoy's "How People Live". Chertkov represented the interests of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy and offered more meaningful books for the people. They were supposed to replace the vulgar editions that were published and be extremely cheap, at the same price as the previous ones - at 80 kopecks per hundred. This is how the new publishing house of cultural and educational character "Posrednik" began its activity. Sytin willingly accepted the offer. In the first four years alone, the Posrednik firm issued 12 million copies of elegant books with works of famous Russian writers, drawings on the covers of which were made by artists Repin, Kivshenko, Savitsky and others.
I. D. Sytin, V.G. Chertkov and A.I. Ertel.
Sytin understood that the people needed not only these publications, but also others that directly contribute to the education of the people. In the same 1884 at the Nizhny Novgorod fair appeared the first Sytinsk "General calendar for 1885".
“I looked at the calendar as a universal reference book, as an encyclopedia for all occasions,” wrote Ivan Dmitrievich. He placed appeals to readers in calendars, consulted with them on improving these publications.
In 1885, Sytin bought the publishing house of the publisher Orlov with five printing machines, type and inventory for publishing calendars, and selected qualified editors. He entrusted the design to first-class artists; he consulted with L.N. about the content of the calendars. Tolstoy. Sytinsky "General Calendar" has reached an unprecedented circulation - six million copies. He also issued tear-off "diaries".
The extraordinary popularity of calendars demanded a gradual increase in the number of their names: by 1916 their number had reached 21 with a multimillion circulation of each. Business expanded, incomes grew ... In 1884, Sytin opened a second bookstore in Moscow on Nikolskaya Street.
In 1885, with the acquisition of its own printing house and the expansion of lithography on Pyatnitskaya Street, the themes of Sytyn's publications were replenished with new directions. In 1889, a book-publishing partnership was established under the firm of I.D. Sytin with a capital of 110 thousand rubles.
The energetic and sociable Sytin became close to the progressive figures of Russian culture, learned a lot from them, making up for the lack of education.
Since 1889, he attended meetings of the Moscow Literacy Committee, which paid much attention to publishing books for the people. Together with public education figures D. Tikhomirov, L. Polivanov, V. Bekhterev, N. Tulupov and others, Sytin publishes brochures and pictures recommended by the Literacy Committee, publishes a series of folk books under the motto "Pravda", prepares, and then begins to publish with 1895 series “Library for self-education”.
Having become a member of the Russian Bibliographic Society at Moscow University in 1890, Ivan Dmitrievich took upon himself the costs of publishing the journal "Knigovedenie" in his printing house. The society elected ID Sytin as its life member.
Ivan Sytin at his desk in his printing house.
The great merit of I.D.Sytin consisted not only in the fact that he published in mass circulation cheap editions of Russian and foreign literary classics, but also in the fact that he produced numerous visual aids, educational literature for educational institutions and extracurricular reading, many scientific popular series designed for a variety of tastes and interests. With great love, Sytin published colorful books and fairy tales for children, children's magazines. In 1891, together with the printing house, he acquired his first periodical, the magazine Vokrug Sveta.
The annual release of wholesale and retail catalogs, including in the thematic areas, often illustrated, made it possible for the Partnership to widely advertise its publications, to ensure their timely and qualified sale through wholesale warehouses and bookstores.
Acquaintance in 1893 with A.P. Chekhov had a beneficial effect on the activities of the book publisher. It was Anton Pavlovich who insisted that Sytin start publishing a newspaper. In 1897, the Partnership acquired the previously unpopular newspaper Russkoe Slovo, changed its direction, and in a short time turned this publication into a large enterprise, inviting talented progressive journalists - Blagov, Amfiteatrov, Doroshevich, Gilyarovsky, G. Petrov, Vas. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko and others. The circulation of the newspaper at the beginning of the 20th century was approaching a million copies.
Hda printing house of the Partnership of I.D. Sytin in Moscow.
At the same time, I.D. Sytin improved and expanded his business: he bought paper, new machines, built new buildings for his factory (as he called the printing houses on Pyatnitskaya and Valovaya streets). By 1905, three buildings had already been erected. Sytin constantly, with the help of associates and members of the Association, conceived and implemented new publications. For the first time, the publication of multivolume encyclopedias was undertaken - People's, Children's, Military. In 1911, an excellent publication “The Great Reform” was published, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom. In 1912 - the multivolume jubilee edition “The Patriotic War of 1612 and Russian Society. 1812-1912 ″.
Patriotic War and Russian Society 1812-1912. Anniversary edition of Sytin.
In 1913 - a historical study of the three hundredth anniversary of the House of Romanov - "Three centuries". At the same time, the Partnership published the following books: "What does a peasant need?" "Amfiteatrova - about the suppression of the" rioters "in 1905.
Anniversary edition "Three centuries".
Sytin's active publishing activities often provoked dissatisfaction with the authorities. Increasingly, censorship slingshots appeared on the way of many publications, the copies of some books were confiscated, and the distribution by the efforts of the publisher of free textbooks and anthologies in schools was seen as undermining the foundations of the state. A “case” was opened in the police department against Sytin. And it is not surprising: one of the richest people in Russia did not favor those in power. Coming from the people, he warmly sympathized with the working people, his workers and believed that the level of their talent and resourcefulness was extremely high, but the technical training in the absence of a school was insufficient and weak. "... Oh, if only these workers were given a real school!" - he wrote. And he created such a school at the printing house. So in 1903, the Partnership established a school of technical drawing and technical affairs, the first graduation of which took place in 1908. During admission to the school, preference was given to the children of employees and workers of the Association, as well as residents of villages and villages with primary education. General education was replenished in evening classes. Education and full maintenance of students was carried out at the expense of the Partnership.
School of technical drawing and technical business at the printing house.
The authorities called the Sytinsk printing house the “hornet's nest”. This is due to the fact that the Sytinsk workers were active participants in the revolutionary movement. They stood in the front ranks of the insurgents in 1905 and published the issue of Izvestia of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies announcing a general political strike in Moscow on December 7. And on December 12, at night, retribution followed: by order of the authorities, the Sytinsk printing house was set on fire. The walls and ceilings of the newly built main building of the factory collapsed, printing equipment, ready-made editions of publications, stocks of paper, art blanks for printing were destroyed under the rubble ... This was a huge damage to the established business. Sytin received sympathetic telegrams, but did not succumb to despondency. Six months later, the five-story building of the printing house was restored. Pupils of the art school restored drawings and cliches, made originals of new covers, illustrations, headpieces. New machines were purchased ... The work continued.
The network of Sytin's bookselling enterprises also expanded. By 1917, Sytin had four stores in Moscow, two in Petrograd, as well as stores in Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov, Yekaterinburg, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Irkutsk, Saratov, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, in Warsaw and Sofia (jointly with Suvorin).
Bookstore I. D. Sytin in Yekaterinburg. 1913 g.
Each store, apart from retail trade, was engaged in wholesale operations. Sytin had the idea to deliver books and magazines to factories and factories. Orders for the delivery of publications on the basis of the published catalogs were carried out within two to ten days, since the system of sending literature by cash on delivery was excellently established. 1916 marked the 50th anniversary of I.D. Sytin. The Russian public widely celebrated this anniversary on February 19, 1917. The Russian Empire was living out its last days. A solemn celebration of Ivan Dmitrievich took place at the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow. This event was also marked by the release of a beautifully illustrated literary and artistic collection "Half a century for a book (1866 - 1916)", in the creation of which about 200 authors took part - representatives of science, literature, art, industry, public figures, who highly appreciated the outstanding personality of the hero of the day and his book publishing, educational activities. Among those who left their autographs along with articles one can name M. Gorky, A. Kuprin, N. Rubakin, N. Roerich, P. Biryukov and many other remarkable people. The hero of the day received dozens of colorful artistic addresses in luxurious folders, hundreds of greetings and telegrams. They emphasized that the work of I.D. Sytin is driven by a lofty and bright goal - to give the people the cheapest and most needed book.
Literary and art collection dedicated to the 50th anniversary of I. Sytin's publishing activity. Printing house of T-va I.D.Sytin, 1916.
Of course Sytin was not a revolutionary. He was a very rich man, an enterprising businessman who knew how to weigh everything, calculate everything and stay with a profit. But his peasant origin, his stubborn desire to introduce ordinary people to knowledge, to culture, contributed to the awakening of national self-awareness. He took the Revolution as an inevitability, for granted, and offered his services to the Soviet government. “The transition to the faithful owner, to the people of the entire factory industry, I considered a good deed and entered the factory as a free worker,” he wrote in his memoirs. under the new government she reliably went to the people ”.
First, a free consultant to Gosizdat, then the implementation of various orders of the Soviet government: he negotiated in Germany on the concession of the paper industry for the needs of the Soviet publishing house, on the instructions of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs he traveled with a group of cultural figures to the United States to organize an exhibition of paintings by Russian artists, led small printing houses. Under the trademark of Sytin's publishing house, books continued to be published until 1924. In 1918, the first brief biography of V.I. Lenin. A number of documents and memoirs testify that Lenin knew Sytin, highly appreciated his activities and trusted him. It is known that at the beginning of 1918 I.D. Sytin was at the reception of Vladimir Ilyich. Apparently it was then - in Smolny - that the publisher presented the leader of the revolution with a copy of the anniversary edition of Half a Century for a Book with the inscription: “Dear Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Yves. Sytin ”, which is now kept in Lenin's personal library in the Kremlin.
"Half a century for a book. 1866-1916 Literary and artistic collection dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of the publishing activity of ID Sytin", Moscow, 1916
Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin worked until he was 75 years old. The Soviet government recognized Sytin's services to Russian culture and the education of the people. In 1928, he was given a personal pension, and an apartment was assigned to him and his family.
It was in the middle of 1928 that ID Sytin settled in his last (out of four) Moscow apartment at number 274 on Tverskaya Street in building number 38 (now Tverskaya Street, 12) on the second floor.
Building on Tverskaya. Built by architect A.E. Erichson.
Widowed in 1924, he occupied one small room, in which he lived for seven years, and died here on November 23, 1934. After him, his children and grandchildren continued to live in this apartment. Buried I. D. Sytin at the Vvedensky (German) cemetery.
The memory of Sytin is also captured in the memorial plaque on the house number 18 on Tverskaya Street in Moscow, which was installed in 1973 and testifies that the famous book publisher and educator Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin lived here from 1904 to 1928.
Memorial plaque on the house where I.D. Sytin lived (Tverskaya St., 18)
In 1974, at the grave of I.D. Sytin, a monument with a bas-relief of a book publisher (sculptor Y.S. Dines, architect M.M. Volkov) was erected at the Vvedenskoye cemetery.
It is not known exactly how many editions I.D. Sytin in his entire life. However, many Sytynsk books, albums, calendars, textbooks are kept in libraries, collected by book lovers, and found in second-hand bookstores.
It is also necessary to pay tribute to the fact that the publisher always remembered that he was a native of the Kostroma land. It is known that for a number of schools in the Kostroma province he sent free periodicals, including the newspaper Russkoye Slovo, which he published. In several towns of the province there were bookstores that distributed his books. In 1899, especially for Kostroma, Sytin published a catalog of the book warehouse "Kostromich", which provided the province with books, newspapers and magazines. Out of almost 4000 items in the catalog, more than 600 were offered by Sytin's Partnership and Mediator.
The story of the publisher Ivan Sytin
In contact with
classmates
Georgy Stepanov
Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin. Photo: RIA Novosti
Ivan Sytin was called the first citizen of the Russian land. Think about it: he published about half a billion books. Sytin owned nine newspapers and twenty magazines, including such well-known ones as Vokrug Sveta, Russkoe Slovo, Den, Niva, On Land and Sea. The chain of his bookselling and stationery stores stretched from Warsaw to Irkutsk. In the cities, he bought the best places to sell newspapers. At the stations of 28 major railway lines, I had 600 kiosks.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, there was not a single lordly mansion in Russia, not a single peasant hut, not a department, not a school where his name would not be pronounced with respect. Since it was he, Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin, who was the first in the empire to publish books at the cost of 1 kopeck. And contrary to scientific forecasts and philistine inertia, he did the impossible - he shook it up, stirred up the outback, inspired this colossal inert mass to read.
Sytin was all-encompassing like God. In 1901-1910, the "ID Sytin Partnership" literally flooded Russia with its products. There were 369 titles of textbooks alone, 4,168,000 copies in total. Spiritual and moral editions - 192, number 13 601 000 copies. Do not count luboks, primers, calendars, dictionaries, fiction, journalism, popular science and children's books.
Sytin's printing house on Pyatnitskaya. Source: M. Nashchokina "Architects of Moscow Art Nouveau"
Even the disastrous wave of plebeian lawlessness that swept the country in 1917 did not immediately plunge into the abyss the mighty flotilla that this ambitious nugget built from scratch and led to new shores. After the October coup, the Bolsheviks nationalized the leading Sytinsk printing houses, closed newspapers, in particular the Russkoe Slovo, for a sharp, principled condemnation of the seizure of power in Petrograd. Leaving Moscow, the fearless publisher made his way to Lenin, who, after listening to him, narrowed his eyes: "All affairs are subject to nationalization, my friend!"
Sytin gasped: “My business is myself! Maybe you will nationalize me too? "
The leader smiled: “You will be able to live and work as you did. And we will leave you housing, and we will give you a pension according to your age, if you are not against us and your intentions are sincere. "
Sytin handed Lenin his memoirs: "Here, if you please see -" Life for a book. "
He returned to Moscow inspired. But Sytin was not allowed into the printing house, his printing house on Tverskaya Street, house 18: the government newspapers Izvestia and Pravda were already printed there. For a person who, as the Moscow City Council defined, for many years “poisoned the Russian people with his popular prints,” the path to the future of the whole people was closed.
"I left school lazy"
Sytin was born in 1851 into a family of economic peasants in the Kostroma province. His father, a volost clerk, drank, left home, wandered somewhere for weeks and eventually lost his job. Vanya, the eldest of four children, studied in a rural elementary school, which he recalled without enthusiasm: “The school was one-class, the teaching was complete carelessness, at times severity with punishments with flogging, kneeling on peas and hitting the back of the head. The teacher sometimes appeared drunk in the classroom. The result of all this was the complete licentiousness of the students and disregard for the lessons. I left school lazy and got a disgust for science and books ... "
Sytin did not receive a university education. As a twelve-year-old teenager, he helped his furrier uncle to trade furs at the Nizhny Novgorod fair. Two years later he was assigned as a "boy" in the bookstore of the Old Believer merchant Pyotr Sharapov, a publisher of popular prints.
“I was tall and physically healthy,” wrote Sytin. - All the blackest chores around the house lay on me: in the evening I had to clean boots and galoshes for the owner and the clerks, set the clerks on the table and serve food; in the morning - bring water from the pool, firewood from the shed, take out tubs and garbage in the trash. "
Having become the right hand of an elderly merchant, Sytin at the age of 25 favorably married the daughter of a pastry chef Evdokia Sokolova and took four thousand rubles as a dowry. Years later, the ascetic Evdokia Ivanovna, being the wife of a millionaire, did not even think to reorganize into a bourgeois way, not pampering either herself or the household. For dinner, she served cabbage soup, roast and compote. Dinner - from the leftovers of lunch. If the owner wanted to drink some tea, he went to a nearby tavern.
So, adding to the dowry another three thousand borrowed rubles, Sytin in 1876 ordered the latest lithographic press from France and opened his own workshop near Dorogomilovsky Bridge. The foreign machine itself painted the sheets in five colors. Before that, splints were painted by hand in three colors - otherwise you will be tortured. But the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 helped Sytin rise above the level of similar owners of popular print publishing houses.
“On the day of the declaration of war,” he later recalled, “I ran to Kuznetsky Most, bought a map of Bessarabia and Romania and told the master to copy part of it during the night, indicating the place where Russian troops crossed the Prut. At 5 o'clock in the morning, the map was ready and put into the car with the inscription: "For newspaper readers. A guide." The entire circulation was instantly sold out. For three months I have traded alone. Nobody thought to interfere with me. "
In 1879, having paid off his debts, Sytin bought his own house on Pyatnitskaya Street, where he had already installed two lithographic presses. Business quickly expanded, Sytynsk popular prints were in great demand.
From lubok to Pushkin
In 1882 he formed the publishing and bookselling partnership "Sytin and Co." with a capital of 75 thousand rubles. And the next year, he opened his own bookstore at the Ilyinsky Gate on Old Square in Moscow.
Sytin owes his fame not to rare luck, not to a miracle, not to the fact that he has become a symbol of commercial prosperity. He once and for all put an end to the tendency according to which high literature was available only to a thin layer of society - literate and wealthy. The works of Russian classics were sold exclusively in large cities and for fabulous money.
Literary and artistic collection dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the publishing activity of I. Sytin. Printing house of T-va I.D.Sytin, 1916
Literary and art collection dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the publishing activity of I. Sytin. Printing house of T-va I.D.Sytin, 1916
The readers' tastes of the bulk of the peasantry were fed by publications of a different sort. Among the cheap books delivered to the villages by open-minded walkers, in the first place were commemorations for the good and funeral, prayer books and the lives of saints. Then there was spiritual and moral literature like "Death of an Inveterate Sinner", "Interpretations of the Apocalypse", "Last Judgment". There were fabulous stories: "Eruslan Lazarevich", "Bova Korolevich", as well as songbooks, writers, dream books and calendars. Historical novels were sold: "Parasha the Siberian", "Yuri Miloslavsky", "The Battle of the Russians with the Kabardians".
"What a terrible mass of all printed rubbish is being carried and transported to all the ends of Russia!" - the self-taught peasant Ivan Golyshev was indignant.
Sytin noted: “Although the work on the popular book has been my profession since childhood, I saw all the flaws of the Nikolsky market well. By instinct and guesswork, I understood how far we were from real literature and how good and evil, beauty and ugliness, reason and stupidity were intertwined in our business. " The only one of the popular publishers, he decided to break out of this popular popular print of his own and to snatch at the same time his fellow citizens.
The idea rested primarily on economic parameters: in order to find a sale in the popular environment, the book had to remain very cheap. The income of the popular print publisher from the ruble did not exceed 10-15%. With such a profit, there could be no question of attracting professional writers and artists to the production of books for peasants, who received 100 rubles per page. To increase royalties ten to twenty times, it was required to multiply the circulation of publications. However, this idea itself did not belong to Sytin.
One autumn day in 1884, a young man entered his shop. “My name is Chertkov,” the guest introduced himself and took out of his pocket three thin books and one manuscript. These were the stories of Leskov, Turgenev and Tolstoy's "How People Live". Vladimir Chertkov, a publicist and a close friend of Leo Tolstoy, asked Sytin if he would agree to publish "more meaningful books for the people", and certainly at the same price as cheap literature. He takes over the mediation between the authors and Sytin.
The publisher eagerly responded, although he understood what the risk was. Their joint publishing house with Chertkov and supported by Tolstoy, Posrednik, was at first of a charitable nature. The authors - Garshin, Leskov, Grigorovich, Uspensky, Chekhov - considered it their duty to write specifically for the "Mediator", without requiring a fee. However, the demand for their works was such that the publication almost did not cover the costs. Nevertheless, Sytin continued the work he had begun. In 1887, he published several dozen of Pushkin's works with a total circulation of one million copies. Including an eight-kopeck one-volume collection of 975 pages.
This and other books were printed in small print on poor paper, but they had hard covers.
State Publishing House and Council of People's Commissars
“Around the desert, virgin forest, - wrote Sytin about the state of the book market in the 1880s. "Everything was shrouded in the darkness of ignorance and ignorance." He began his exploration of the desert by creating a network of distributors. The publisher attracted to himself an unprecedented then innovation - lending. Ivan Dmitrievich gave out literature in advance to selected distributors who had established themselves as sober and sensible people. They traded from boxes - Sytin not only purposefully formed the assortment of boxes, but also taught the bookseller how to better arrange the goods on the counter.
Sytin acted under the unspoken motto “Cheap and high quality”. Huge circulations made it possible not to resort to loans. The ridiculous prices amazed contemporaries. There is a known case when he was offered to publish a complete collection of Gogol's works at 2 rubles per book, in five thousand copies. Sytin pulled his glasses over his forehead, quickly calculated something on a piece of paper, then said: "It won't do - we'll publish 200 thousand at fifty rubles." He bought only the latest printing equipment, attracted the best artists and typesetters for cooperation. Another find was his book series. “The book should be published not alone, but in groups, libraries ... so the reader will sooner notice it,” he said.
Sytin enlarged his business in accordance with all the rules of conducting market wars. Tirelessly monitoring the situation, he ruthlessly cracked down on competitors, knocking down their prices, and then eating up their firms. So he easily bankrupted and outbid Konovalov's lubochny publishing house. So he won a difficult battle against the monopolist in the market for Gatsuka calendars. So in 1914 he absorbed the powerful publishing house "Marx's Association", after which its annual turnover reached 18 million rubles.
Events typical for the then Russian realities are associated with the "manufacturer" Sytin. In 1905, calculating that punctuation marks make up about 12% of the set, he decided to pay typesetters only for the letters they typed. Response demands followed - to reduce the working day to 9 hours and increase wages. Sytin conceded, but his order regarding punctuation marks remained in force. The strike that began on 11 August was picked up at other enterprises. As they said later in the St. Petersburg salons, the All-Russian strike of 1905 occurred because of the “Sytinskaya comma”.
Or here is the message of the newspaper Novoye Vremya on December 13, 1905: “Today at dawn Sytin's printing house on Valovaya Street burned down. With her cars, she was estimated at a million rubles. In the printing house, up to 600 vigilantes were barricaded, mainly workers in the printing business, armed with revolvers, bombs and a special kind of rapid-fire, which they call machine guns ... "
In 1916, Moscow celebrated with pomp half a century of Sytin's book publishing activity. At the Polytechnic Museum, the publisher honored the full bloom of the creative intelligentsia of both capitals. The illustrated literary and art collection "Half a century for a book", released on the occasion, was signed by Gorky, Kuprin, Nicholas Roerich.
A separate story is about how Chekhov encouraged him to create the first popular mass newspaper in Russia. Having invested in the inconspicuous Moscow tabloid newspaper Russkoe Slovo in the 1890s, Sytin received the Leviathan of the Russian Press and the News Factory. The circulation from 30 thousand copies increased to 700 thousand in 1916, the editorial office acquired a network of its own correspondents in the cities. Everything that happened in the provinces was reflected on the pages with such efficiency that the chairman of the Council of Ministers Sergei Witte was amazed: "Even the government does not have such a speed of gathering information."
After October 1917, Sytin's niche as a publisher of mass literature was occupied by the state. The publisher, according to him, turned into an "accountable executor" of the State Publishing House, which indicated "what to publish, in what quantity and of what quality." For some time he still worked as a supply consultant under the head of the State Publishing House Vatslav Vorovsky, but illness and senile infirmity gradually took over.
The Sytinskaya printing house on Pyatnitskaya Street functioned under his name until 1920, publishing brochures with communist propaganda. Then it was renamed the First State. In October 1927, the Council of People's Commissars appointed Sytin a personal pension of 250 rubles a month. Until his death from pneumonia in November 1934, the great scribe lived with his family in a tiny apartment on Tverskaya.
Born into the family of the volost clerk Dmitry Gerasimovich and Olga Alexandrovna Sytin, the eldest of four children.
Young Ivan finished 3 classes of a rural school. At the age of 12, he began working as a seller from a furrier's tray at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, was a painter's apprentice, and took on any small work. At the age of 13 he moved to Moscow and on September 13, 1866 he got a job in the bookshop of the furrier merchant PN Sharapov as a “boy”. Soon he attracted the attention of the owner for his diligence and ingenuity.
In 1876, Ivan Sytin married Evdokia Ivanovna Sokolova, from a merchant family, taking a dowry of 4,000 rubles. Its former owner P.N. Sharapov gave him another 3,000 rubles in debt. This money was used to purchase a lithographic machine for printing popular prints. On December 7, a lithographic workshop was opened on Voronukhina Gora in Dorogomilov.
The first products of the Sytinskaya printing house, which brought financial success, were maps of military operations during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. The assortment was personally formed by Ivan Sytin and consisted of popular prints drawn by such famous artists as V.V. Vereshchagin and V.M. Vasnetsov. More than 50 million titles of very high quality printed materials were produced per year: portraits of kings, nobles, generals, illustrations for fairy tales and songs, religious, everyday, humorous pictures. The price was microscopic, and the main distributors were itinerant traders, who were given long-term loans and good conditions.
In 1889, Sytin bought a house on Pyatnitskaya and equipped a printing house there - the current First Model Printing House.
Fame came to the publisher Sytin in 1882 after being awarded the bronze medal of the All-Russian Industrial Exhibition for his printed products. The first bookstore of the publisher Sytin was opened on January 1, 1883 on Staraya Square, and in February a partnership on the faith "ID Sytin and Co." with a capital of 75,000 rubles was founded.
In 1884, the Posrednik publishing house was created, which published the works of Leo Tolstoy, IS Turgenev, N.S. Leskov and other Russian writers at very affordable prices for buyers. In the same year, the "General Calendar for 1885" was presented at the Nizhny Novgorod exhibition, which became a family reference manual, and opened a whole series of calendars: "Small universal", "Kiev", "Modern", "Old Believers". The circulation exceeded 6 million copies the next year, and in 1916 one type of calendars was published, whose circulation was over 21 million copies.
Since 1980, ID Sytin began to publish the journal "Knigovedenie". In 1891 he bought the magazine Around the World, which became a favorite reading among young people. Literary supplements to it were published works by M. Reed, J. Verne, A. Dumas, A. Conan-Doyle. In 1897 he began to publish the newspaper "Russian Word" - a subscription for a year cost only 7 rubles, and by 1917 the circulation was more than 1 million copies.
During this period, Ivan Sytin became the largest Russian publisher, producing high-quality and cheap textbooks, children's books, classical essays, and religious literature. Since 1895, he published the "Library of Self-Education" - a total of 47 books on history, philosophy, economics, natural science were published. For children, alphabets, fairy tales of different peoples, stories, short stories, collections of poems, author's fairy tales of A.S. Pushkin were published. V.A. Zhukovsky, brothers Grimm, C. Perrot. Children's magazines "Friend of Children", "Pchelka", "Mirok" were published. By 1916, more than 440 textbooks and manuals for the elementary grades of the school had been published, and the Primer had been reprinted for 30 years.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, popular encyclopedias were published: "Military Encyclopedia", "People's Encyclopedia of Scientific and Applied Knowledge", "Children's Encyclopedia".
In 1904, a large 4-storey printing house was built according to the design of A.E. Erickson on Pyatnitskaya Street with the latest equipment. The books were distributed through their own bookstores in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Kharkov, Warsaw, Yekaterinburg, Voronezh, Rostov, Irkutsk. A school of technical drawing and lithography was founded at the printing house. Particularly talented students from her moved to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, receiving higher education. In 1911, a "Teacher's House" was built on Malaya Ordynka, with a museum, library, auditorium.
In 1914, Ivan Sytin's printed matter accounted for a quarter of all printed circulation in Russia.
After the establishment of Soviet power, all of Sytin's enterprises were nationalized, and he himself represented the Land of the Soviets abroad: he arranged an exhibition of Russian paintings in the United States, negotiated concessions with Germany. He was assigned a personal pension in 1928 and provided with an apartment on the street. Tverskoy.
Memory of Ivan Sytin
23.11.1934
Russian Entrepreneur
Book Publisher and Enlightener
Ivan Sytin was born on February 5, 1851 in the village of Gnezdnikovo, Kostroma province. He grew up in the family of a volost clerk. As the eldest in the family, he began working early as a furrier's assistant and in a bookstore. At the age of twenty-five he got married and, having bought a machine for lithographic printing, opened his own printing house, which he called the "First Model Printing House".
A big profit was brought to him by issuing maps from the place where the battles took place in the Russian-Turkish war. In 1882, at the All-Russian Industrial Exhibition, Sytin was awarded a bronze medal for book printing. He initiated the opening of a publishing house that would print books at affordable prices. This is how the Posrednik publishing house was created, which published the works of Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Leskov.
Sytin came up with the idea of publishing annual calendars, which at the same time played the role of reference manuals. For the first time such a "General Calendar" was released in 1885, a year later the calendar was issued with a circulation of 6 million copies, and in 1916 more than 21 million.
In 1890, Sytin became a member of the Russian Bibliographic Society, published the journals Knigovedenie, Vokrug Sveta, Modny Zhurnal, Vestnik Shkoly, and many others, the newspaper Russkoe Slovo, publications for children Pchelka, Mirok "," Friend of Children ". The Military Encyclopedia became a major publishing project for Sytin. From 1911 to 1915, 18 volumes were published, but the edition remained unfinished.
Ivan Dmitrievich's printing house was one of the main employers of "agency labor", that is, almost everything was given "for contracts" to small owners. These workers were not covered by any, albeit small, benefits of "cadre" employees. However, Sytin did not indulge his workers, as he was very tight-fisted.
Once I calculated that punctuation marks make up about 12% of the typesetting, and on reflection, I decided to pay typesetters only for the typed letters. Meanwhile, typing at that time was carried out manually, and the worker does not care whether he takes a letter or a comma from the cash register; labor efforts in both cases seemed to be the same, so the typesetters met Sytin's proposal with hostility.
Outraged workers on August 11, 1905 put forward demands to the owner: to reduce the working day to 9 hours and to increase wages. Sytin agreed to shorten the working day, but his order not to pay for punctuation marks was upheld. And then a strike began, which was picked up by workers from other factories and factories. Later, in the Petersburg salons, they said that the All-Russian strike of 1905 occurred "because of the Sytinskaya comma."
During the December uprising of 1905 in Moscow, Sytin's printing house on Valovaya Street was one of the centers of stubborn resistance and burned down as a result of street battles.
By 1917, Sytin was the owner of a large chain of bookstores in many provinces of the Russian Empire from the city of Warsaw to the city of Irkutsk. In mid-February 1917, the Russian public widely celebrated the 50th anniversary of Sytin's book publishing activity with the release of the literary and artistic publication Half a Century for a Book, in preparation for the publication of which Maxim Gorky, Alexander Kuprin, Nikolai Rubakin, Nikolai Roerich took part; only about 200 authors.
After the revolution, Ivan Dmitrievich's enterprises were nationalized, but he himself continued active social activities. In 1928 he received a personal pension and a two-room apartment.
Sytin Ivan Dmitrievich died on November 23, 1934 in the city of Moscow. He was buried at the Vvedenskoye cemetery.
Memory of Ivan Sytin
In Moscow, at number 18 on Tverskaya Street, which he owned, a memorial plaque was erected in 1973 in his memory, and in 1974 a monument with a bas-relief of a book publisher was erected on his grave.
In 1989, the apartment on Tverskaya, where Sytin lived for the last 7 years, was opened as a museum-apartment of ID Sytin.
In the village of Gnezdnikovo, Soligalich district and in Soligalich itself, a street is named in his honor.
Publishing house I.D. Sytin as an example of a successful combination of educational and entrepreneurial activities in pre-revolutionary Russia.
Ivan Sytin was born in 1851 in the village
Gnezdnikovo, Kostroma province. His father was a senior clerk in the district, but suffered from a mental disorder, from time to time he left home, quit his job, wandered, and eventually lost his job. Even when my father was working, his earnings were barely enough for food. Ivan studied at a rural elementary school, but did not feel a particular urge to study. He recalled: “I left school lazy and got disgusted with studying and books - so I was disgusted with cramming by heart in three years. I knew from word to word the entire psalter and the clock, and nothing but words remained in my head. "
Sytin never received a university education, he did not even graduate from a parish school. However, certifying him, the famous cadet publicist I.V. Hesse wrote that "it was a genuine nugget with a strong self-awareness and great ambition."
Ivan possessed an inquiring lively mind, practical quick-wittedness, was strong and enduring beyond his years. He began his entrepreneurial activity by helping his furrier uncle to trade in furs at the Nizhny Novgorod fair. In 1866, Sytin, by acquaintance, was assigned to the Moscow merchant P.N. Sharapov, the owner of a book and picture and furrier shop on the Nikolsky market. This was the beginning of his luck, which never left him: Ivan was accepted in the Sharapov family as his own.
Until the age of 18, Sytin "lived in boys, then for seven years he was in business," which, according to him, gave nothing but professional skills and physical work.
Sharapova's shop supplied small traders with traditional goods - songwriters, writers, fairy tales, popular prints, mainly of religious content. However, by selling these widely distributed editions, Sytin felt the enormous possibilities of publishing in Russia, established relations with small merchants, who eventually turned into experienced booksellers, through whom he later distributed huge editions of books published by his publishing house. At the same time, Ivan Sytin realized that it was extremely unprofitable to act as an intermediary between printers and merchants, while actually being completely dependent on the manufacturers of printed products.
Ivan presented his arguments in favor of opening his own publishing house to the owner. And he, who did not like innovations, agreed with his arguments and gave him money to purchase his own lithographic workshop. Sytin bought a high-quality lithographic machine in France, hired a small qualified staff to work in the workshop: two printers, several draftsmen, five workers. So, at the age of twenty-five, with the help of P.N. Sharapova Sytin opened in September 1876 a small lithograph in the area of the current Kutuzovsky Prospekt. A year later, he transferred her to Pyatnitskaya Street and expanded his business. The first products of Sytin's workshop - perfectly executed lithographs and popular prints on topics most popular among the common people - have already found demand. And later Sytin was sensitive to the mood of the masses, so, during the years of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, his workshop produced a whole cycle of battle paintings and maps of military operations. I. D. Sytin recalled how, on the day of the declaration of war, he ran to the Kuznetsky Most, bought a map of Bessarabia and Romania and told the master to copy a part of the map during the night indicating the place where our troops crossed the Prut. At 5 o'clock in the morning the map was ready and put into the car with the inscription: “For newspaper readers. Allowance ". The entire circulation of the cards was immediately sold out. Later, as the troops moved, the map also changed. However, for three months only Sytin was selling them, he had no competitors. There were many orders for printed products, but the amounts of money coming from the sale of maps and paintings were used very rationally.
Over time, Sytin became one of the most famous publishers of books for the public. In 1882, his publishing house was awarded a bronze medal at the All-Russian Exhibition.
On January 1, 1883, a new bookstore was opened at the Ilyinsky Gate on Old Square in Moscow, its owner was Ivan Sytin. The trade was so successful that within a few months Sytin and three of his employees concluded an agreement between themselves on the establishment of the “I. D. Sytin and Co. "" with a fixed capital of 75 rubles. It was one of the first Russian joint-stock publishing houses. "The inflow of capital," wrote Sytin, "revived the young business, and the field for entrepreneurship and trade initiative immediately expanded." in 1910, the ID Sytin Association had two well-equipped printing complexes in Moscow alone, and the publishing house employed more than two thousand people.
The partnership earned gigantic profits annually due to the difference between the selling price of products and the minimum cost, and super profits due to quick sales and capital turnover.
E. Dinershtein writes about Sytin: “At the same time, his biography is also a page of the history of Russian books, because, to a large extent, thanks to his personal efforts, literature for the people, which was customarily called“ Vanka's Literature, ”overcoming empty content, became a phenomenon in the cultural life of the country. ". For a long time, popular publications and all kinds of calendars were brought to I.D. Sytin was widely known and constantly profitable, which ultimately made it possible to start publishing popular science, practical, fiction and children's literature. At first, the publishing house produced typical folk literature, such as "Eruslan Lazarevich". But later the partnership publishes more serious, high-quality literature. Among the works published by the partnership, the most popular were such books as the posthumous collected works of L.N. Tolstoy, "Military Encyclopedia", "Children's Encyclopedia", works devoted to the Patriotic War of 1812, the peasant reform of 1861, etc.
Sytin began to cooperate with the "Mediator" - a publishing house created by a small group of people united around L.N. Tolstoy. Thanks to Sytin, "Mediator" was able to quickly and widely expand its activities, and Ivan Dmitrievich, with the help of "Mediator", to make acquaintance with the best representatives of the Russian intelligentsia - L. Tolstoy, V. Korolenko and others. In November 1884 the publisher met with the head "Mediator" V.G. Chertkov, a friend of L.N. Tolstoy, and since 1928 the editor of his complete works in 90 volumes.
Sytin called the next decade of joint work with Chertkov the "second stage" of his life. He said that thanks to cooperation with him, he "understood what literature is and what it means to be a publisher of books for the people." In large circulations, cheap books "The Mediator" with the works of L.N. Tolstoy, N.S. Leskov, V.M. Garshina, G.I. Uspensky, A.P. Chekhov, V.G. Korolenko, A.I. Ertel, K.M. Stanyukovich and others spread throughout Russia, despite the opposition of the authorities.
The third stage in Sytin's life, according to him, was the establishment of contacts with people who rallied around the liberal "Russkiye Vedomosti" and "Russkaya Mysl".
A new direction in the work of Sytin's publishing house is the publication of mass newspapers and magazines (Vokrug Sveta, Niva, Iskra, etc.). So, since 1887, Ivan Dmitrievich, with the help of the famous lawyer F.N. Plevako became the publisher of the Russian Word newspaper, which at the beginning of 1917 was distributed with only one subscription in the amount of over one million. This success was ensured by the publication due to its position: sympathetic attitude towards the 1905 revolution, protests against the national policy of the autocracy. After the October Revolution, the newspaper was closed and the printing house was nationalized. However, I.D. Sytin accepted the new government and began to actively cooperate with it. M. Gorky was the author of the first books and leaflets issued by him during the Soviet era.
I.D. Sytina published books on a wide range of topics: school textbooks, popular science, applied and children's books. Works of the classics of Russian literature were published in large editions: A.S. Pushkin, N.V. Gogol, L.N. Tolstoy. Much attention was paid to anniversary and encyclopedic publications, calendars, colorful posters and posters, pictures of spiritual content. The portraits of the sovereign-emperor were also published in the publishing house of Sytin. Some researchers are inclined to note that among the Sytinsk publications there were a lot of low-grade literature such as oracles, dream books, etc. But their release was largely justified - by the end of the 19th century, four-fifths of the population of Russia was still illiterate.
E. Dinershtein sees Sytin's merit in the fact that “he was always guided by the rule: you cannot wait for the peasant to come for the book himself, the book must be brought to him. Sytin skillfully organized a whole army of women, distributors of goods of this kind, by providing broad credit. Moreover, he reduced the cost of the main type of national publications - a leaflet (a brochure in one printed sheet) to an unprecedented price: 80 kopecks per hundred, and every one of them was sold for at least a kopeck ”.
Employee Sytina A.V. Rumanov recalled that “when the copyright for Gogol expired, his office presented to Sytin a draft publication of the complete collected works of the writer in the amount of 5,000 copies at 2 rubles per copy; Sytin listened, pushed his glasses over his forehead, began to shake off his pencil, calculating something on a piece of paper, and firmly declared: “Not good. We will publish two hundred thousand fifty rubles each ”.
It is no coincidence that in the days of the half-century anniversary of the publishing house of Sytin, the newspapers wrote about Ivan Dmitrievich that "commerce was for him a means, not an end." Since Sytin sold his products at the lowest prices available to the poorest part of the population, so as not to go broke, he bought modern high-performance printing equipment abroad, which made it possible to significantly increase the circulation of books.
“Why was my book cheaper? - said Sytin, speaking at a meeting of Moscow book publishers at the end of 1923. “I bought paper and made it in the cheapest way available. All our stationery factories in Russia offered paper much more expensive than I had. I bought paper in Finland and entered the third part in paper
a factory that produced paper for my part on the terms that were made only for me. They were giving a 10-15% discount for the paper that I used for textbooks. We did the printing work in the printing houses that we were part of, which, thanks to special machines, the necessary technical conditions, were 50-60% cheaper than in other enterprises. In view of this, I received for 2.5-3.5 kopecks. Vakhterov's primer. I threw off 30% to the merchant, 2.5 kopecks. paid the author, 2.5 kopecks. remained for the publisher. "
M.V. Sabashnikov at the same meeting emphasized that “I, D. Sytin created a one-stop enterprise with his own printing houses and a host of retail stores. Its fixed capital was 3.5 million rubles, the annual turnover reached an enormous figure - 18 million rubles a year (1915). It is difficult to speak about the average turnover of capital here with such various enterprises as a newspaper or the publication of a special scientific book. Having his own printing houses, Sytin resorted to three types of credit: 1) paper, 2) bank and 3) subscription-reader. Paper factories lent him loans for up to 6 months. As for the subscribers, they gave Sytin significant working capital, which came to the cashier before the beginning of the year. As a conclusion regarding the previous forms, one can assume: they were created on credit - paper, printing, banking and subscriber-reader ”.
Sytin also managed to achieve unprecedented success in publishing thanks to his constant striving to improve the quality of publications, in particular popular literature. In the early 80s, he released several popular prints - paintings by the sculptor M.O. Mikeshin, the author of the projects of monuments "Millennium of Russia" in Novgorod, B. Khmelnitsky in Kiev and others, although they did not enjoy much success. In 1914, he invited a group of artists headed by N.K. to work on the popular print. Roerich, but the buyers did not accept the modernized splint (except for Roerich's work "The Enemy of the Human Race").
Sytin attracted to work only the best printers, artists, never bargaining with them in price, demanding only one thing from them - high quality work.
Ivan Dmitrievich tried to be as demanding as possible to the publication of literature of any content. Thus, he was able to turn calendars into genuine "folk encyclopedias". He made educational literature accessible to children of all classes and attracted the best teachers and scientists to write primers and textbooks (for many years he maintained business relations with Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Ertel, Koni, Morozov and other Russian writers, scientists, teachers). Sytin even tried to create a society called School and Knowledge, which would publish not only affordable books for ordinary people, but also manuals for rural teachers (more than 400 such publications were published by the partnership before the October Revolution, some of them were reprinted later).
I. D. Sytin organized a whole network of wholesalers and bookstores. The partnership's branded stores were located in many large cities: four in Moscow, two in St. Petersburg, one each in Warsaw, Kiev, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Odessa, Kharkov, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Nizhny Novgorod. Thanks to such a wide network of stores and warehouses, as well as extensive ties with other booksellers, Sytin not only established sales of his products, but also received fairly complete information about product sales and made changes to the publication plan. -
To protect himself from social conflicts, the entrepreneur tried to create good working conditions for the workers. He did a lot to open a free school of drawing technology and lithography at the publishing house, in which the most gifted children of workers and employees studied, the school was headed by Academician N.A. Kasatkin.
A. Lopatkin writes: “Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin created a completely new type of large commercial printing and publishing enterprise for Russia, put the production of mass literature for the common people on stream. I.D. Sytin, in terms of the number of titles and circulation of published literature, firmly held the first place among Russian publishing firms. So, in 1909, he published 900 titles with a circulation of 12.5 million copies. This accounts for more than 14 percent of all that was produced on the Russian book market. And for the period from 1881 to 1909, the publications of the Partnership sold about 300 million copies ”.
Ivan Dmitrievich set the ultimate goal of his activity to create the first concern in Russia that would print its books on its own paper, on its own machines and sell products in its stores.
Sytin dreamed of creating the "House of Books", the first educational and production complex in Russia for the improvement and development of the book business. To implement this idea, he founded the "Society for the Promotion and Development of Book Industry in Russia." In a short time, the company raised over a million rubles and bought an extensive land plot on Tverskoy Boulevard for the construction of a building.
E. Dinerstein notes: “With the light hand of the well-known publicist G.S. Petrov and Sytin were often called "Russian nuggets". Nature, no doubt, endowed Ivan Dmitrievich with many talents, but that Sytin, whom not only all of Russia knew, but the whole world, he made himself. Happy fate brought him together with the largest writers, scientists, teachers of the country. He was the son of his time, and in achieving his life task, he walked, it would seem, the same paths as all his fellow publishers. They were distinguished only by the scale of their thinking, efficiency and the nature of the goal to which Sytin devoted his life. Speaking about his personal qualities, one should first of all note his inherent sense of humor, the ability to self-critically evaluate his actions and a certain firmness that was felt always and in everything. "
One of its employees, teacher N.V. Tulupov, spoke of the owner as a sympathetic and kind person: “I am not saying this in relation to myself, no. A responsive and generous person, he was in general towards employees and workers. True, in his address he was often unrestrained and rude, but to his liking, I repeat, he was a wonderful person. " ...
Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin continued to work after the October Revolution as a consultant at the State Publishing House. However, the new government did not need either himself or the books he printed. ...
After the revolution, Sytin's niche for publishing mass literature was immediately occupied by the state, the process of stateizing book publishing began precisely with this sector of literature. Therefore, the entrepreneur had to abandon the publication of his traditional books. The release of textbooks was taken under strict state control. Ivan Dmitrievich was forced to revise the entire range of his products.
After the October Revolution, the Moscow Soviet immediately tried to expropriate its newspaper printing house to publish its own newspaper.
Protesting against this decision, People's Commissar of Education A.V. Lunacharsky wrote: "The confiscation of this printing house deals such a strong blow to the publishing house of T-va Sytin that it will almost probably lead to its closure, and at the same time to unemployment for 2,000 persons." The People's Commissar proposed to the Moscow Soviet to return the enterprise to its owner, who was ready to put at his disposal a machine for printing a newspaper, and, at cost, to provide the necessary paper for this. However, Lunacharsky's intervention turned out to be useless - soon after the government moved to Moscow, Sytin's printing house was nationalized for the needs of Pravda and Izvestia. True, at the disposal of Ivan Dmitrievich for some time remained two other printing houses in Moscow and Petrograd.
On October 23, 1918, the Moscow City Council issued a decision on the municipalization of the book business. Neither buyers nor publishers were thrilled with the move. The People's Commissariat for Education received protests from provincial school teachers who bought textbooks in Moscow stores. Of course, publishers and booksellers were outraged.
All these petitions had their effect: the People's Commissariat of State Control became interested in the process of municipalization. In the opinion of the controllers, the bookstores were unjustifiably "expropriated" from Sytin and other publishers. The inspectors' conclusions provoked indignation in the Moscow City Council. In particular, in the explanatory note of the Moscow Soviet it was said that for many years Sytin "poisoned the Russian people" with his luboks.
As a result, a resolution of the Small Council of People's Commissars was adopted, according to which the Moscow Soviet was proposed to revise the decision of the Interdepartmental Commission and withdraw from sale all previous publications of popular literature of the former firms of Sytin and others, "not meeting the needs and tasks of modern socialist proletarian culture." On May 19, 1919, the Council of People's Commissars, signed by V.I. Lenin confirmed this decision.
The owners of private printing houses, including Sytin, had to seek a compromise with the authorities, since they were completely dependent on government orders. Suffering huge losses from the confiscated publications, Sytin tried to compensate for the losses by modernizing the range of his products. He turned to Gosizdat with a request to allow him to issue the "People's Economic Calendar for 1920". It publishes sets of portraits of Russian writers and Pictures from a Child's Life, although a wagon of paper was required to release them.
At the end of 1919, after the nationalization of the main printing house on Pyatnitskaya Street, Sytin turned from its owner into a customer. Therefore, he had to ask the State Publishing House to print in its former printing house 15 children's books (with a circulation of 10 thousand copies) and finish printing 16 books by L.N. Tolstoy (in the same edition) for schoolchildren.
He asked to allow him and Rosiner (manager of the AF Marks Partnership Publishing House) to travel to Finland at their own expense. There he planned to organize the printing of textbooks and other books authorized and approved by Gosizdat and the People's Commissariat for Food from matrices made from a set in Moscow, as well as to seek to provide the Finnish side with paper. However, the Labor and Defense Council adopted a decree: “Due to the impossibility of buying a large amount of paper, the question of the trip comrades. Sytin should be considered superfluous. " Then Ivan Dmitrievich entered into an agreement with the Moscow Department of Public Education for the reprint of his old textbooks (the publication of new ones was the monopoly of Gosizdat).
Sytin lost one acquisition after another. On May 10, 1920, by order of the State Publishing House, 45 thousand poods of paper were confiscated from him without any remuneration. In 1922, the publishing house was nationalized under the pretext of a new interpretation of the old decree, which had already been canceled.
The conflict between the publisher and the state was considered at the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. As a result, it was decided to keep a significant part of Sytin's property, but as a publisher he won little.
There were rumors that Ivan Dmitrievich, after unsuccessful attempts to organize a large publishing house in Soviet Russia, moved his publishing house to Berlin. However, the entrepreneur did not have sufficient funds for that, and he could not count on partners.
At the end of 1923, a Moscow meeting of book publishers was held, at which they spoke about the need to reduce the cost of books, about ways to meet the needs of the population for books, especially its low-income strata.
Sytin, reminding the participants of the seminar about the beginning of his activities in the book field, noted that in those years “the bulk of the people still could not read, they looked at the book as a whim. We needed to train the reader. I was very much supported by the attention of the intelligentsia, wide circles of writers and scientists. Of course, there were not enough own funds for a big business. Banks and a popular newspaper helped. Even now, book business will not work without funding. We need to raise significant funds to make the book available.<...>The buyer was penniless. It was difficult to account for the promissory notes of a small buyer. I almost did not take into account purchase bills ”.
Sytin took part in the work of almost all the commissions formed by the meeting. As a result, a draft decree on benefits for publishers and booksellers was prepared. However, this proposal was protested by the Agitprop of the Central Committee and was not implemented. „
Not surrendering to all new difficulties, Ivan Dmitrievich continued to strive for cooperation with the new government. On September 28, 1922, he turned to the leadership of Gosizdat with a proposal to expand the publication of mass literature more widely. “For 55 years now I have been serving the Russian book,” wrote Sytin. - During this time, I managed to create the most powerful printing factory in Russia and find ways for cheap folk books to the darkest and most distant corners.
With the opportunity opened up for a new cultural development, the book-publishing partnership headed by me again intends to start publishing folk books, with which it began its activity in 1893 and for which the greatest need is felt in the wide strata of the people.
In terms of type, these publications will be similar to the popular print that we published earlier, but have been fundamentally reformed, and although they are still cheap in terms of price, they are undoubtedly artistic in content and appearance.
Russia is poor and does not like to spend money on a book, because a publicly available penny book, in one, two, three sheets, as my many years of experience has shown, is the only ray of light.
I present the list of authors and works for the first series and humbly ask your permission to publish them. From it you can see that the cycle of folk publications that we have conceived includes exclusively classical literature. Supplied with pictures, vignettes and headpieces and typed in large print, these books will be useful for adults and for children outside the classroom reading. "
Sytin did not intercede in vain. October 17, 1922. The editor decided to "start reprinting the popular prints from Sytin's previously published TV" - "Khaz-Bulat daring", "Song about the merchant Kalashnikov", "Ukhar-merchant", "Vanka-klyuchnik", "Oh, my box is full, full ... "," The sun rises and sets ... "and others.
However, these were all weak concessions to the publisher, who had great authority in the book publishing environment. “The partnership of I.D. Sytin ”more and more curtailed work. Only the Petrograd publishing house, the former A.F. Marx, widely developed its activities (published mainly topical foreign literature, for example, "Tarzan" by E. Burroughs). On December 11, 1924, the Presidium of the Central Bureau of the Soviet Union adopted a resolution "On private publishing houses", which proposed the government to strengthen control and censorship "in relation to private publishing products" and by all means to oust the private owner from the book market.
In 1927, the Council of People's Commissars appointed Sytin a personal pension, which was later increased twice.
