Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin - the largest book publisher in Russia
On December 19, 1876, Ivan Dmitrievich SYTIN, the largest book publisher in Russia, started his own business.
The future publisher was born under serfdom on January 25 (February 5), 1851 in the small village of Gnezdnikovo, Soligalichsky district, Kostroma province. Ivan was the eldest of the four children of Dmitry Gerasimovich and Olga Alexandrovna Sytin. His father came from economic peasants and served as a volost clerk. The family constantly needed the bare necessities and 12-year-old Vanyusha had to go to work. His working life began at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, where a tall, smart and diligent boy helped a furrier peddle fur products. He also tried himself as an apprentice painter. Everything changed when, on September 13, 1866, 15-year-old Ivan Sytin arrived in Moscow with a letter of recommendation to the merchant Sharapov, who kept two trades at the Ilyinsky Gate - furs and books. By a happy coincidence, Sharapov did not have a place in the fur shop, where well-wishers predicted Ivan, and from September 14, 1866, Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin began his countdown of serving the Book.
The patriarchal merchant-Old Believer Pyotr Nikolaevich Sharapov, a well-known publisher of popular prints, song books and dream books at that time, became the first teacher, and then the patron of the executive, who did not shy away from any menial work, a teenager who neatly and diligently fulfilled any order of the owner. Only four years later Vanya began to receive a salary - five rubles a month. Perseverance, perseverance, diligence, the desire to replenish knowledge impressed the elderly owner who did not have children. His inquisitive and sociable student gradually became Sharapov's confidant, helped sell books and pictures, picked up simple literature for numerous offen - village book-carriers, sometimes illiterate and judging the merits of books by their covers. Then the owner began to instruct Ivan to conduct trade at the Nizhny Novgorod Fair, to accompany carts with popular prints to Ukraine and to some cities and villages in Russia.
1876 was a turning point in the life of the future book publisher: having married Evdokia Ivanovna Sokolova, the daughter of a Moscow confectioner, and having received four thousand rubles as a dowry, he borrowed three thousand from Sharapov and bought his first lithographic machine. On December 7, 1876, I. D. Sytin opened a lithographic workshop on Voronukhina Gora near the Dorogomilovsky Bridge, which gave life to a huge publishing business.
The opening of a small lithographic workshop is considered the moment of birth of the largest printing enterprise MPO "First Model Printing House". Sytin's first lithograph was more than modest - three rooms. Printed publications at first did not differ much from the mass production of the Nikolsky market. But Sytin was very inventive: so with the beginning of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878, he began to issue cards with the designation of hostilities with an inscription; "For Newspaper Readers. Manual" and battle pictures. The product sold out instantly, bringing the publisher a decent income. In 1878, lithography became the property of I. D. Sytin, and the following year he had the opportunity to buy his own house on Pyatnitskaya Street and equip lithography at a new location, purchase additional printing equipment.
Participation in the All-Russian Industrial Exhibition of 1882 and receiving a bronze medal (he could not count on more because of his peasant origin) for book exhibits brought fame to Sytin. For four years, he fulfilled Sharapov's orders in his lithography under the contract and delivered printed editions to his bookstore. And on January 1, 1883, Sytin had his own bookstore of a very modest size on Staraya Square. Trade went briskly. From here, Sytin'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 repeatedly visited, who talked with the officers, got accustomed to the young owner. In February of the same year, the book publishing firm ID Sytin and Co. was already established. Books in the beginning were not distinguished by high taste. Their authors, for the sake of the consumers of the Nikolsky market, did not neglect plagiarism, they subjected some works of the classics to a "turnover".
“I understood by instinct and conjecture how far we were from real literature,” wrote Sytin. “But the traditions of the popular book trade were very tenacious and they had to be broken with patience.”
But then, in the autumn of 1884, a handsome young man entered the shop on Staraya Square. "My surname is Chertkov," he introduced himself and took three thin books and one manuscript out of his pocket. These were the stories of N. Leskov, I. Turgenev and Tolstoy's "What makes people alive." Chertkov represented the interests of Leo Tolstoy and offered more meaningful books to the people. They were supposed to replace the vulgar editions that were produced and be extremely cheap, at the same price as the previous ones - 80 kopecks per hundred. So the new publishing house of a cultural and educational nature, Posrednik, began its activities, since Sytin willingly accepted the offer. In the first four years alone, the Posrednik firm produced 12 million copies of elegant books with works by famous Russian writers, the drawings on the covers of which were made by the artists Repin, Kivshenko, Savitsky and others.
Sytin understood that the people needed not only these publications, but also others that directly contributed to the enlightenment of the people. In the same 1884, the first Sytin's "General Calendar for 1885" appeared at the Nizhny Novgorod Fair.
"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 about the improvement of these publications.
In 1885, Sytin bought the printing house of the publisher Orlov with five printing machines, font and inventory for publishing calendars, and selected qualified editors. He entrusted the design to first-class artists, and consulted with L. N. Tolstoy about the content of the calendars. Sytin's "General Calendar" has reached an unprecedented circulation - six million copies. He also published tear-off "diaries". The extraordinary popularity of calendars required a gradual increase in the number of their titles: by 1916 their number had reached 21 with a multi-million circulation of each of them. The business expanded, incomes grew ... In 1884, Sytin opened a second bookstore in Moscow on Nikolskaya Street. In 1885, with the acquisition of his own printing house and the expansion of lithography on Pyatnitskaya Street, the subject of Sytin's publications was 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.
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 the figures of public education D. Tikhomirov, L. Polivanov, V. Bekhterev, N. Tulupov and others, Sytin publishes brochures and paintings recommended by the Literacy Committee, publishes a series of folk books under the motto "Pravda", conducts preparations, and then begins to publish with 1895 series "Library for self-education". Becoming a member of the Russian Bibliographic Society at Moscow University in 1890, Ivan Dmitrievich took on the costs of publishing the journal Knigovedenie in his printing house. The Society elected I. D. Sytin as its life member.
The great merit of I. D. Sytin consisted not only in the fact that he produced mass editions of 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 non-fiction 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.
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 issue of multi-volume encyclopedias was undertaken - People's, Children's, Military. In 1911, a magnificent edition of The Great Reform was published, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom. In 1912 - a multi-volume anniversary edition " Patriotic War 1612 and Russian society. 1812-1912". In 1913 - a historical study on the tercentenary of the Romanov dynasty - "Three centuries". At the same time, the Partnership also published such books: "What does a peasant need?", "Modern Socio-Political Dictionary" (which explained the concepts " Social Democratic Party", "dictatorship of the proletariat", "capitalism"), as well as "Fantastic Truths" by Amfiteatrov - about the pacification of the "rebels" of 1905.
Sytin's active publishing activity often caused dissatisfaction with the authorities. Increasingly, censorship slingshots arose in the way of many publications, the circulation of some books was confiscated, and the distribution of free textbooks and readers in schools through the efforts of the publisher was seen as undermining the foundations of the state. In the police department, a "case" was opened against Sytin. And no wonder: 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 technical training, due to the lack of a school, was insufficient and weak. "...Ah, if 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 engineering, the first graduation of which took place in 1908. When enrolling in a school, preference was given to the children of employees and workers of the Partnership, as well as residents of villages and villages with elementary education. General education was replenished in the evening classes. Training and full content students were made at the expense of the Association.
The authorities called the Sytin printing house a "hornet's nest". This is due to the fact that the Sytin workers were active participants in the revolutionary movement. They stood in the front ranks of the rebels in 1905 and published an issue of Izvestia of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies announcing the announcement of a general political strike in Moscow on December 7th. And on December 12, retribution followed at night: by order of the authorities, the Sytin printing house was set on fire. The walls and ceilings of the newly built main building of the factory collapsed, printing equipment, finished circulations of publications, stocks of paper, artistic blanks for printing died under the rubble ... This was a huge loss for an established business. Sytin received sympathetic telegrams, but did not succumb to despondency. Within six months, the five-story building of the printing house was restored. Art school students restored drawings and clichés, 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, Warsaw and Sofia (jointly with Suvorin). Each store except retail trade was engaged in wholesale operations. Sytin came up with the idea of delivering books and magazines to plants and factories. Orders for the delivery of publications based on the published catalogs were fulfilled within two to ten days, since the system for sending literature by cash on delivery was established perfectly. 1916 marked the 50th anniversary of I. D. Sytin's publishing activity. The Russian public widely celebrated this anniversary on February 19, 1917. The Russian Empire was living out its last days. A solemn honoring 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 publishing and educational activities. M. Gorky, A. Kuprin, N. Rubakin, N. Roerich, P. Biryukov and many other remarkable people can be named among those who left their autographs along with articles. 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. 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 people's self-consciousness. He took the Revolution as inevitable, for granted, and offered his services to the Soviet government. “I considered the transition to a faithful owner, to the people of the entire factory industry, a good thing and entered the factory as an unpaid worker,” he wrote in his memoirs. under the new government, it has reliably gone to the people.
First, a free consultant of the State Publishing House, then fulfilling various instructions from the Soviet government: he negotiated in Germany a concession for the paper industry for the needs of Soviet book publishing, on the instructions of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs 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 brand of Sytin's publishing house, books continued to be published until 1924. In 1918, under this stamp, the first short biography V. I. Lenin. A number of documents and memoirs testify that Lenin knew Sytin, highly valued 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 the book" with the inscription: "To dearly respected Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Iv. Sytin", which is now kept in Lenin's personal library in the Kremlin.
Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin worked until the age of 75. The Soviet government recognized Sytin's services to Russian culture and enlightenment of the people. In 1928, a personal pension was established for him, and an apartment was assigned to him and his family.
It was in the middle of 1928 that I. D. Sytin settled in his last (out of four) Moscow apartment at No. 274 on Tverskaya Street in house No. 38 (now Tverskaya St., 12) on the second floor. 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. I. D. Sytin was buried at the Vvedensky (German) cemetery.
The name and legacy of I. D. Sytin is constantly showing great interest. Articles and books are written about him, dissertations are prepared.
But the most significant source of study of the life and work of the largest Russian book publisher and educator is his own memoirs and the testimonies of his contemporaries.
For the first time, Sytin's memoirs appeared in the already mentioned anniversary edition of Half a Century for a Book in 1916. In the early twenties they were continued, but were not published. Only at the end of the fifties, the youngest son of the publisher - Dmitry Ivanovich - found his father's manuscript in the family archive and took it to Politizdat, and already in 1960 the publication Life for the Book appeared, reprinted in 1962. On the basis of this edition and under the same name, the memoirs of I. D. Sytin "Pages of the Experienced" together with the memoirs of his contemporaries about him were published by the "Kniga" publishing house in 1978 (with the dedication of the First Exemplary Printing House to the 100th anniversary of its foundation by Sytin), and in 1985 the second revised edition of this book. Two editions of K. Konichev's novel "Russian Nugget" were published: 1966 - Leningrad and 1967 - Yaroslavl. An interesting research book "I.D. Sytin" in the series "Book Figures" was published by the "Kniga" publishing house in 1983 (author - E.A. Dinershtein).
In 1990, an American scientist, Professor Charles Ruud, published a book in Canada on English language"Russian Entrepreneur: Book Publisher Ivan Sytin from Moscow, 1851-1934". "Tsentrnauchfilm" created a color documentary film "Life for the Book. ID Sytin" according to the script by Yu. Zakrevskiy and E. Osetrov (directed by Yu. A. Zakrevskiy). Millions of viewers got acquainted with it.
The memory of Sytin is also imprinted on a memorial plaque on the house number 18 on Tverskaya Street in Moscow, which was installed in 1973 and indicates that the famous book publisher and educator Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin lived here from 1904 to 1928. In 1974, a monument with a bas-relief of the publisher was erected on the grave of I. D. Sytin at the Vvedensky cemetery (sculptor Yu. S. Dines, architect M. M. Volkov).
It is not known with accuracy how many publications I. D. Sytin published in his entire life. However, many Sytin's books, albums, calendars, textbooks are kept in libraries, collected by book lovers, found in second-hand bookshops.
Born in the family of the volost clerk Dmitry Gerasimovich and Olga Alexandrovna Sytin, the eldest of four children.
Young Ivan graduated from the 3rd grade of a rural school. At the age of 12, he began working as a salesman from a furrier's stall 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 got a job in the bookstore of the merchant-furrier P.N. Sharapov as a “boy”. Soon attracted the attention of the owner diligence and ingenuity.
In 1876, Ivan Sytin married Evdokia Ivanovna Sokolova, from a merchant family, taking a dowry of 4,000 rubles. His former owner, P.N. Sharapov, lent him another 3,000 rubles. With this money, a lithographic machine for printing popular prints was purchased. On December 7, a lithographic workshop was opened on Voronukhina Gora in Dorogomilovo.
The first products of the Sytin printing house, which brought financial success, were maps of hostilities during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. The assortment was personally formed by Ivan Sytin and consisted of popular prints, which were painted by such famous artists as V.V. Vereshchagin and V.M. Vasnetsov. More than 50 million titles of printed matter of very high quality 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 ofen traveling traders, who were provided with 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 the bronze medal of the All-Russian Industrial Exhibition was awarded for his printed products. The first bookstore of the publisher Sytin was opened on January 1, 1883 on Staraya Ploshchad, and in February, the I.D. Sytin and Co., a partnership based on faith, was founded with a capital of 75,000 rubles.
In 1884, the Posrednik publishing house was established, which published the works of L.N. Tolstoy, I.S. Turgenev, N.S. Leskov and other domestic 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 guide, and opened a whole series of calendars: "Small General", "Kiev", "Modern", "Old Believer". The circulation exceeded 6 million copies in the following year, and in 1916 one type of calendar was published, whose circulation was more than 21 million copies.
Since 1980, I.D. 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 appendices to it were printed 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 compositions, and religious literature. Since 1895, he published the "Library of Self-Education" - a total of 47 books were published on history, philosophy, economics, and natural science. ABCs, fairy tales of different peoples, novels, short stories, collections of poems, author's fairy tales by A.S. Pushkin were published for children. V.A. Zhukovsky, brothers Grimm, C. Perro. Children's magazines "Friend of Children", "Bee", "Mirok" were published. By 1916, more than 440 textbooks and manuals had been published for primary school school, and the "Primer" was 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 project of A.E. Ericsson on Pyatnitskaya street with the latest equipment. 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 it moved to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, receiving higher education. In 1911, the "Teachers' House" was built on Malaya Ordynka, with a museum, a library, an auditorium.
In 1914, Ivan Sytin's printed matter accounted for a quarter of the total printed circulation in Russia.
After the establishment of Soviet power, all the enterprises of I.D. Sytin were nationalized, and he himself represented the Land of Soviets abroad: he organized an exhibition of Russian paintings in the USA, negotiated concessions with Germany. He was assigned a personal pension in 1928 and provided with an apartment on the street. Tverskoy.
- Folk pictures
- Awaken the mind
- Classics in circulation
- fourth estate
- businessman or dreamer
At the beginning of the 20th century, the whole of Russia knew the name of Ivan Sytin. During his life, he published a total circulation of 500 million books: there was a Sytin primer in every house, thanks to his publishing house, millions of children learned about the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, he was the first to print the complete works of Russian classics. He was called "American" for his love of technical innovations- At home, he remained the patriarchal father of a large family.
Folk pictures
Ivan Sytin was born in the village of Gnezdnikovo, Kostroma province, in the family of the volost clerk Dmitry Sytin. He completed only three classes of school, and as a teenager began working in one of the shops of the Nizhny Novgorod fair when the family moved to Galich.
The career of the future publisher began in 1866 in the bookshop of the merchant Sharapov at the Ilyinsky Gate, where Ivan Sytin entered the service as a teenager. He worked there for ten years, after which he borrowed money from a merchant to buy a lithographic machine and opened his own workshop. The machine was French, printed in five colors, which was a real rarity in Russia at that time.
Then Sytin married the merchant's daughter Evdokia Sokolova. They had 10 children, of whom four eldest sons, having matured, began to work with their father.
At the end of the 19th century, ofeni, merchants-itinerants, who delivered simple goods to the villages, traded at bazaars and fairs, played an important role in the book trade. In the boxes of these merchants, among other goods for the common people, there were books and affordable calendars, dream books and favorite popular prints. Sytin provided goods for the Feni, and they gave him the most honest feedback with the buyer: they told what people bought more willingly and what they showed special interest in.
Ivan Sytin. 1916 Photo: ceo.ru
Ivan Sytin. Photo: polit.ru
Ivan Sytin's office. Photo: primepress.ru
The word “lubok” itself began to be used in the 19th century, and before that it was called “amusing sheets” and “common folk pictures”. These sheets entertained, informed about major events, and were kept by many for home decoration. Sytin personally selected spiritual and secular subjects for paintings, attracted well-known artists to create popular products among the people, including, for example, Viktor Vasnetsov and Vasily Vereshchagin.
“My publishing experience and my whole life spent among books confirmed me in the thought that there are only two conditions that ensure the success of a book:
- Very interesting.
- Very accessible.
I have pursued these two goals all my life.Ivan Sytin
When they were obliged to obtain permission from the governor and describe all the goods in order to trade, Sytin began to open shops and compile book catalogs so as not to lose the lucrative market. This became the foundation of his future network, which at the beginning of the 20th century already included 19 stores and 600 kiosks at railway stations throughout Russia. “Every year we sold over 50 million paintings, and as literacy and taste developed among the people, the content of the paintings improved. How much this enterprise has grown can be seen from the fact that, starting with one small lithographic machine, it then required the hard work of fifty printing machines.- recalled Sytin.
Awaken the mind
Until 1865, the right to publish calendars belonged exclusively to the Academy of Sciences. For the majority of illiterate people, they were the most accessible printed publication. Sytin compared the calendar to "the only window through which they looked at the world." He took the issue of the first "People's Calendar" with particular seriousness - the preparation took five years. Sytin wanted to make not just a calendar, but a reference book and a universal reference book for all occasions for many Russian families. In order to publish the calendar “very cheaply, very elegantly, very accessible in terms of content” and, of course, in a large circulation, Sytin bought special rotary machines for the printing house, the mechanism of which significantly increased the rate of production.
Sytin's business quickly became profitable. Understanding what topics arouse the greatest interest among the people, he created popular and sought-after products. So the first big income was brought to him by battle sketches and maps with explanations of military operations, which he issued during the Russian-Turkish war.
In 1879, Sytin bought a house on Pyatnitskaya Street, where he already installed two lithographic machines, and three years later registered the I.D. Sytin and Co., the fixed capital of which amounted to 75 thousand rubles. At the All-Russian Art Exhibition, Sytin's products were awarded a bronze medal, and by the end of the 1890s, almost three million pictures and about two million calendars were produced annually in his printing houses.
Ivan Sytin's store in Nizhny Novgorod. Photo: livelib.ru
Ivan Sytin in his office. Photo: rusplt.ru
The building of the Sytin Printing House on Pyatnitskaya Street, Moscow. Photo: vc.ru
Classics in circulation
In 1884, in St. Petersburg, on the initiative of the writer Leo Tolstoy, the Posrednik publishing house was opened, which was supposed to produce inexpensive books for the people, and Sytin was invited to cooperate. These books cost a little more than popular prints, they were not sold so briskly, but for Sytin their publication was a “priest service”. "Mediator" published spiritual and moral literature, translated fiction, popular and reference books, albums on art. Thanks to his work with Posrednik, Sytin met many significant figures in the literary and artistic life of Moscow: writers Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Korolenko, artists Vasily Surikov and Ilya Repin.
Sytin made available to a huge number of people the works of the best writers of the 19th century. In 1887, he surprised his contemporaries: he took the risk of releasing the collected works of Alexander Pushkin in a circulation of 100,000 copies. "Alexander Sergeevich" for 80 kopecks in 10 volumes was sold out in a few days, like a similar edition of Gogol. After the death of Tolstoy, it was Sytin who agreed to publish the complete works of the writer - in an expensive 10,000th edition and accessible to less wealthy people in a 100,000th edition. The proceeds from the sale were used to purchase the lands of Yasnaya Polyana for transfer to the ownership of the peasants, as Tolstoy bequeathed. The publisher then actually earned nothing, but his act received a great response in society.
fourth estate
Of many writers, Sytin was especially close to Anton Chekhov. The playwright predicted for him grandiose successes in the newspaper business. The idea of publishing a popular, public newspaper soon became a reality. In 1897, the “Partnership of I.D. Sytin bought Russkoye Slovo, whose circulation he managed to increase hundreds of times. The best journalists of that time wrote for the newspaper: Vladimir Gilyarovsky, Vlas Doroshevich, Fedor Blagov. The record circulation of the publication after February 1917 reached 1.2 million copies. Today we would call Sytin a media tycoon - in addition to the Russian Word, his partnership owned 9 newspapers and 20 magazines, one of which is still published under its original name - Around the World.
Sytin began to perform various tasks on behalf of the government, for example, he organized an exhibition of Russian paintings in the United States, negotiated concessions with Germany. In 1928, he was granted a personal pension, and an apartment on Tverskaya was assigned to his family.
On November 23, 1934, Ivan Sytin died and was buried at the Vvedensky cemetery, where a monument with a bas-relief of the publisher was erected. And the apartment on Tverskaya, where Sytin lived last years life, became his museum.
At one of the audiences with Finance Minister Sergei Witte, Sytin said: “Our task is broad, almost limitless: we want to eliminate illiteracy in Russia and make the textbook and book public property”. He did not have time, as he wanted, to build a paper factory, but he managed to prepare 440 textbooks, 47 books of the "Library of Self-Education" on philosophy, history, economics and natural science, several original encyclopedias: military, children's, folk. Sytin did not just make the book accessible - he knew how to arouse the reader's curiosity for new and new knowledge.
The material was prepared by Elena Ivanova
History 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 network of his bookselling and stationery shops stretched from Warsaw to Irkutsk. In the cities, he bought the best places for selling newspapers. At the stations of 28 major railway lines, he held 600 stalls.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, there was not a single mansion in Russia, not a single peasant hut, not a department, not a school where his name would not be pronounced with reverence. Since it was he, Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin, who was the first in the empire to print books at a price of 1 kopeck. And contrary to scientific forecasts and philistine inertia, he did the impossible - he shook, stirred up the hinterland, made this colossal inert mass to read.
Sytin was all-encompassing, like God. In 1901-1910, the "Partnership of I. D. Sytin" in the truest sense of the word flooded Russia with its products. There were 369 titles of textbooks alone, with a total of 4,168,000 copies. Spiritual and moral publications - 192, numbering 13,601,000 copies. Do not count the popular prints, primers, calendars, dictionaries, fiction, journalism, popular science and children's books.
Printing house Sytin 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 that mighty flotilla that this ambitious nugget built "from scratch" and led to new shores. After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks nationalized the main Sytin printing houses, closed down newspapers, in particular Russkoye Slovo, for their 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 cases 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 worked. And we will leave you housing, and give you a pension according to age, if you are not against us and your intentions are sincere.
Sytin handed Lenin his memoirs: "Here, if you please, see -" Life for the book "".
He returned to Moscow inspired. But they did not let Sytin into the printing house, his printing house at 18 Tverskaya Street: the government newspapers Izvestia and Pravda were already being printed there. For a man who, as the Moscow Council determined, for many years "poisoned the Russian people with his popular prints", the path to the nation's future turned out to be 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 primary school, which he recalled without enthusiasm: “The school was one-class, teaching was complete carelessness, at times strictness with punishments of flogging, kneeling on peas and cuffs. The teacher appeared in the class sometimes in a drunken state. As a result of all this, there was a complete dissoluteness of the students and neglect of the lessons. I left school lazy and got an aversion to science and books...”
Sytin did not receive a university education. At the age of twelve, he helped his furrier uncle sell furs at the Nizhny Novgorod Fair. Two years later, he was identified as a "boy" in the bookshop of the Old Believer merchant Pyotr Sharapov, the publisher of popular prints.
“I was great in stature and healthy physically,” Sytin wrote. - All the most menial work around the house lay on me: in the evening I had to clean the boots and galoshes for the owner and clerks, set the clerks on the table and serve food; in the morning - bring water from the pool, firewood from the shed, take out the tub and garbage to the trash.
Having become the right hand of an elderly merchant, at the age of 25 Sytin favorably married the daughter of a confectioner 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 of reorganizing herself in a bourgeois fashion, without pampering herself or her household. At dinner she served cabbage soup, roast and compote. Dinner - from the leftovers of lunch. If the owner wanted to drink tea, he went to a nearby tavern.
So, adding to the dowry another three thousand borrowed rubles, Sytin in 1876 ordered the latest lithographic machine from France and opened his own workshop near the Dorogomilovsky bridge. The foreign machine itself painted the sheets in five colors. Prior to this, popular prints were painted by hand in three colors - otherwise you will be tormented. But the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 helped Sytin rise above the level of owners of popular print houses like him.
“On the day war was declared,” he later recalled, “I ran to the Kuznetsky Most, bought a map of Bessarabia and Romania and ordered the master to copy part of it during the night, indicating the place where the Russian troops crossed the Prut. At 5 o'clock in the morning, the card was ready and put into the car with the inscription: "For newspaper readers. A manual." The entire circulation sold out instantly. For three months I traded alone. No one thought to disturb me."
In 1879, having paid off his debts, Sytin bought his own house on Pyatnitskaya Street, where he had already installed two lithographic machines. The business was expanding rapidly, Sytin's popular prints were selling like hot cakes.
From Lubok to Pushkin
In 1882, he formed the Sytin and Co., a publishing and bookselling partnership with a capital of 75,000 rubles. And the following year, he opened his own bookstore at the Ilyinsky Gate on Staraya Square in Moscow.
Sytin owes his fame not to rare luck, not to a miracle, not to the fact that he became a symbol of commercial success. He put an end to the trend once and for all, 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 artistic collection dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the publishing activity of I. Sytin. Printing house of T-va I. D. Sytin, 1916
The readership tastes of the bulk of the peasantry ate publications of a different sort. Among the cheap books delivered to the villages by hodebshchik-ofen, in the first place were commemorations of congratulations and funerals, prayer books and the lives of saints. Then came spiritual and moral literature such as "The Death of an Inveterate Sinner", "Interpretations of the Apocalypse", "The Last Judgment". Fairy tales were in great demand: “Yeruslan Lazarevich”, “Bova Korolevich”, as well as song books, letter books, dream books and calendars. Historical novels found sales: Parasha the Siberian Woman, Yuri Miloslavsky, The Battle of the Russians with the Kabardians.
“What a terrible mass of all kinds of printed rubbish is carried and transported to all ends of Rus'!” - the self-taught peasant Ivan Golyshev was indignant.
Sytin noted: “Although working on a popular print book has been my profession since childhood, I clearly saw all the flaws of the Nikolsky market. By instinct and conjecture, I understood how far we were from real literature and how good and evil, beauty and ugliness, reason and stupidity were intertwined in our work. The only publisher of popular prints, he decided to break out of this popular print of his own and snatch fellow citizens at the same time.
The idea rested primarily on economic parameters: in order to find sales among the people, the book had to remain very cheap. The income of a popular print publisher per ruble did not exceed 10-15%. With such profits, it was out of the question to involve professional writers and artists in the production of books for peasants, who received 100 rubles per sheet. In order to increase fees by ten to twenty times, it was necessary to increase the circulation of publications many times over. However, this idea itself did not belong to Sytin.
One autumn day in 1884, a young man entered his shop. “My surname is Chertkov,” the guest introduced himself and took out three thin books and one manuscript from his pocket. These were the stories of Leskov, Turgenev and Tolstoy's "What makes people alive." Vladimir Chertkov, a publicist, a close friend of Leo Tolstoy, asked Sytin if he would agree to publish "more meaningful books for the people", and always at the same price as cheap literature. He takes over the mediation between the authors and Sytin.
The book publisher readily responded, although he understood the risks he was taking. Their joint publishing house "Posrednik" with Chertkov and supported by Tolstoy at first was of a charitable nature. The authors - Garshin, Leskov, Grigorovich, Uspensky, Chekhov - considered it their duty to write specifically for the "Intermediary", 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-kopek one-volume collection of 975 pages.
This and other books were printed in small print on poor paper, but had hard covers.
Gosizdat and Council of People's Commissars
“There is a desert all around, a virgin forest,” Sytin wrote about the state of the book market of the 1880s. “Everything was shrouded in the darkness of booklessness and illiteracy.” He began the development of the desert with the creation of a network of distributors. The publisher attracted an unprecedented then innovation - lending. To selected distributors, who proved themselves to be sober and intelligent people, Ivan Dmitrievich gave out literature in advance. They traded from boxes - Sytin not only purposefully formed the assortment of the box, but also taught the booksellers how best to lay out 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. Ridiculous prices amazed contemporaries. There is a known case when he was offered to publish the complete works of Gogol at 2 rubles per book, in a five thousandth edition. Sytin pulled his glasses on his forehead, quickly calculated something on a piece of paper, then said: “It’s not good, we’ll issue 200 thousand fifty dollars.” He bought only the latest printing equipment, attracted the best artists and compositors to cooperate. Another of his finds were book series. “The book should be published not by a single person, but by groups, libraries ... so the reader will notice it sooner,” he said.
Sytin enlarged his business according to all the rules of market wars. Tirelessly monitoring the situation, he mercilessly cracked down on competitors, knocking down their prices, and then eating their firms. So he easily went bankrupt and bought Konovalov's popular publishing house. So he won a difficult battle against the monopolist in the Gatsuka calendar market. So in 1914 he absorbed the powerful publishing house Marx's Partnership, after which its annual turnover reached 18 million rubles.
Events typical of the then Russian realities are connected with the "manufacturer" Sytin. In 1905, after calculating that punctuation made up about 12% of the set, he decided to pay compositors only for the typed letters. Reciprocal demands followed - to reduce the working day to 9 hours and increase wages. Sytin relented, but upheld his order regarding punctuation marks. The strike that began on August 11 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 “Sytin comma”.
Or here is the report of the Novoye Vremya newspaper dated 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. Up to 600 vigilantes, mostly printing workers, barricaded themselves in the printing house, armed with revolvers, bombs and a special kind of rapid fire, which they call machine guns ... "
In 1916, Moscow pompously celebrated half a century of Sytin's book publishing activities. In the Polytechnic Museum, the publisher was honored by the entire color of the creative intelligentsia of both capitals. The illustrated literary and artistic 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 1890s in an inconspicuous Moscow tabloid newspaper Russkoye Slovo, Sytin received the Leviathan of the Russian Press and the News Factory. Circulation increased from 30,000 to 700,000 in 1916, and the editors acquired a network of their own correspondents in the cities. Everything that happened in the provinces was reflected on the pages with such speed that the chairman of the Council of Ministers, Sergei Witte, was amazed: "Even the government does not have such a speed in collecting information."
After October 1917, Sytin's niche as a publisher of popular literature was occupied by the state. The book publisher, in his words, has become an "accountable executor" of the State Publishing House, which indicated "what to print, in what quantity and what quality." For some time he still worked as a supply consultant for the head of the State Publishing House, Vaclav Vorovsky, but illness and senility gradually took over him.
The Sytin printing house on Pyatnitskaya Street functioned under his name until 1920, publishing pamphlets 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.
I. D. Sytin. Portrait by A. V. Moravov, 1908.
And the truth is - what if he published mass editions of books for the poor people and made millions on this? What kind of strange situation is this, when everyone is happy, but there are no losers?
Illiterate book publisher
Let's start with the fact that Sytin himself is a man both from the people and from the intelligentsia at the same time. Born in February 1851 in a Kostroma village, his father was a volost clerk.
A clerk, but rustic. Rustic, but a clerk.
Ivan studied for only three years, did not really learn anything and was given "to the people." But not to a restaurant, not to a workshop, but to the bookshop of the Moscow second-hand book dealer Sharapov. True, at first he worked in his uncle's fur shop. It was the uncle who made patronage to the bookseller.
Sytin never returned to education: he did not see the need. Chekhov was surprised later: “This is an interesting person. A big, but completely illiterate, publisher who came out of the people.
The “interesting person”, still not really getting on his feet, met the daughter of the merchant Ivan Sokolov, Evdokia. He courted beautifully, declared his love in the Neskuchny Garden. In 1876 he got Evdokia Ivanovna as his wife, and with her four thousand dowries and many problems.
The young lady turned out to be grumpy and skittish. Controlled every penny and scandalized. Already a publishing tycoon and owner of a famous mansion on Tverskaya Street, as well as a large printing house in Zamoskvorechye, Sytin was forced to secretly run to a tavern to relax over a cup of tea with a simple snack.
The family of Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin is his wife and children. Image from wikipedia.org
At home, everything was strict: for lunch every day, cabbage soup, fried meat and compote. For dinner - something that was not eaten at lunch. Wine, fruits and cold snacks - only on holidays.
However, Ivan Dmitrievich was a conflict-free person, he did not shake his rights and did not suit explanations. He borrowed three thousand, attached them to the dowry - and opened a lithographic workshop.
Sytin's commercial scent was rare. Who would have thought that in 1877 it would be possible to rise on the issue of maps of hostilities (there was a Russian-Turkish war)? But Ivan Dmitrievich - thought. In just a year, he repaid the debt and bought a house at the end of Pyatnitskaya Street. For the first time in his life, his own house, in which he dragged his lithographic machine and bought another one for it.
The process has begun.
1882 - Sytin's products receive a silver medal at the All-Russian Industrial Exhibition.
The same 1882 - Ivan Dmitrievich establishes the "Partnership of I.D. Sytin and K" with a fixed capital of 75 thousand rubles.
1883 - own shop on the Old Square.
1884 - participates in the publishing project "Mediator", created on the initiative of Leo Tolstoy. It was the “Posrednik” that was the first in the state to start producing good literature (it started, as you might guess, with the same Leo Tolstoy) at affordable prices.
The same 1884 - the first serious publishing creative, "The General Calendar for 1885". One day, one leaf. Each page contains helpful tips.
Ivan Dmitrievich did not invent the wheel. Something similar was produced by the Gatsuka printing house at that time. Despite the low printing quality, the circulation of the calendar was more than 100,000 copies.
Sytin did, in general, the same thing, only more beautiful, brighter and more meaningful. The calendar sold out at the moment. On next year a circulation of 6 million was released, and a year later - 21 million.
We can say that it was at this moment that the entrepreneurial, social and missionary credo of the publisher was finally formed. To make good and, moreover, inexpensive books for the poor. Profit? Through circulation.
A simple, even illiterate person should want to pick up a book. This should happen against his will - just as his hand reaches for playing cards or a scale. The book must, simply must overcome these temptations.
Sytin wrote: “All my life I have believed and believe in the strength that helped me overcome all the hardships of life: I believe in the future of Russian education, in the Russian person, in the power of light and knowledge ... My dream is that the people have an affordable, understandable , healthy, useful book.
Ivan Dmitrievich did not compete with other publishing houses. No, he defied drunkenness, gambling and debauchery. Those activities that, in fact, did not give anything to the mind or heart, but created many problems. There were no problems with the books.
Nikolai Nekrasov dreamed in the poem “Who Lives Well in Rus'” about those times when a simple Russian peasant “will carry Belinsky and Gogol from the market”. Sytin made this utopia a reality.
The story is known how Ivan Dmitrievich was offered to publish a collection of Gogol's works with a circulation of 5 thousand copies at a price of 2 rubles. He quickly calculated something in his mind and objected: “No! I will issue 200 thousand and 50 kopecks.
The book really became accessible and, moreover, not at the expense of quality. Sytin formulated his main publishing motto in this way: “Reduce the price of an expensive book, and improve a cheap one.”
For those who have not yet drawn to Gogol, Sytin's assortment included popular prints, a kind of analogue of modern comics. The same action presented in illustrations and short captions. The fundamental difference is in the direction of the vector. Sytin, with the help of his popular prints, led an illiterate peasant to reading real books, and comics, on the contrary, lead a reading person to a simplified perception of the world, which is primarily characteristic of illiterate people.
This, of course, is not about modern masterpieces of this genre. About consumer goods. But Ivan Dmitrievich also had consumer goods. Lubok pictures and calendars were printed in millions and tens of millions. And Russia gradually became the most reading country in the world.
Yuri Nagibin wrote: “The deluxe editions of Sytin were a miracle of printing. I was once presented with Tolstoy's Childhood, Adolescence and Youth for a Christmas tree in the Sytin edition. The book has long disappeared, but its binding, font, amazing color illustrations are still in front of my eyes. It was one of the most joyful miracles of my Spartan childhood."
For a long time, Sytin's books delighted Russians.
Mansion on Tverskaya
House of the Association of I.D. Sytin on Tverskaya. Image from vc.ru
The nineties passed under the sign of periodicals. Ivan Dmitrievich expands his repertoire through magazines and newspapers. Which, in general, is normal: a good peasant does not keep all his eggs in one basket.
It began with the magazine "Knigovedenie". It wasn't even a business. Just in 1890, Ivan Sytin joined the Russian Bibliographic Society and, as a member of this society, took over the production of the magazine. And who else?
The following year, the assortment expanded due to the magazine "Around the World". But the main acquisition occurred in 1897. Ivan Dmitrievich bought the newspaper "Russian Word".
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov inspired him to do this. And he took advantage of it. He said: “The other day I visited Sytin and got acquainted with his case. Interesting in the highest degree. This is a real folk affair. Perhaps this is the only publishing company in Russia where it smells of the Russian spirit and the peasant buyer is not pushed in the neck. Sytin is an intelligent person and tells interesting things… 2300 r. I took from him, selling him a few small things for publication.
Ivan Dmitrievich himself made this decision hard: “Being engaged in book publishing, I devoted all my strength to this business and never seriously thought, did not even think about publishing a newspaper. This was unrelated and alien to me, I did not know the newspaper business and was very afraid of its extreme complexity and difficulty. But A.P. Chekhov, whom I had boundless respect for and loved sincerely, told me almost at every meeting: “Sytin should publish a newspaper.” And not just any, but cheap, folk, public.
At first, I laughed it off as best I could. But Chekhov was so insistent and so seductively painted before me broad newspaper perspectives that in the end he not only convinced me, but positively kindled me. I've almost made up my mind."
Then he started building a mansion on Tverskaya Street both for the editorial office and for himself personally. In the Art Nouveau style that was fashionable at that time and in accordance with the best foreign samples.
Vladimir Gilyarovsky recalled: “The house for the editorial office was built in the manner of a large Parisian newspaper: everywhere there is a corridor system, each of the major employees has his own office, in the lobby and reception room there are little boys for parcels and employees for reports; Not a single employee can be entered without a report from an outsider ...
The editorial office was luxuriously decorated: I.D. Sytin's office, V.M. Doroshevich's office, F.I. Blagov's editor's office, M.A. head of the Moscow chronicle K.M.Danilenok.
Sytin himself and his Cerberus wife lived on the fourth floor.
Prison Publisher
In 1905, during the December uprising, the printing house on Pyatnitskaya almost completely burned down. Until now, historians are arguing: either the workers are to blame, or the police, who, under the sauce of suppressing troublemakers, decided to cut the ground from under the feet of an objectionable entrepreneur.
Muscovites gossiped that the printing house burned down "because of the Sytin comma." Allegedly, shortly before this, Ivan Dmitrievich refused to pay typesetters for punctuation marks, which caused righteous anger.
One way or another, but Sytin rose quickly enough. And continued to improve the business.
A year before the revolution, he was the owner of a decent part of the shares of Marx's publishing house and a controlling stake in Suvorin's company. Four bookstores in Moscow, two in the capital, one each in Warsaw, Kiev, the Bulgarian capital Sofia, Odessa, Yekaterinburg, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Saratov, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, and even in Kholui, a settlement of artisans.
The topic of business, however, was closed by the revolution of 1917. Ivan Dmitrievich suddenly lost everything. Including freedom. Gorky wrote: "In "socialist" Russia, "the freest country in the world," Sytin was imprisoned, having previously destroyed his huge, technically excellent business and ruined the old man.
Soon Sytin was released, but the relationship with the dungeon did not end there. Ivan Dmitrievich was offered to head the prison printing house.
In the absence of more interesting prospects, Sytin agreed: “I was offered to work as the head of the printing house at the Taganskaya prison. Our Association used to have a large corps here with 500 workers; here we made small book binding. They showed me the printing house; Three inferior machines worked in it, at the box office there was a random, seedy font, two line machines - that's all the equipment! .. I did not want to leave the business. Although small, but the printing house, and most attentively conducted the business, waiting for the results.
The authorities soon came to their senses. Sytin was given a decent apartment on Tverskaya, a personal pension. They turned to him for advice, he even traveled - he regularly represented the Soviet printing business in Europe and America.
He died in 1934 and was buried with honors at the Vvedensky cemetery. He got off lightly - they could have been shot.