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Ivan dmitrievich sytin - a native of the kostroma land - the largest book publisher in russia. The genius of commerce and the inspired scribe What you need to know

26.10.2020

Private bussiness

Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin (1851-1934) was born in the village of Gnezdnikovo, Soligalichsky district, Kostroma province. His father was a peasant and, as the best student of a rural school, was sent to the city to be trained as a volost clerk. Later he worked as a clerk all his life. Ivan Sytin himself studied at a rural school for three years. During his studies, his father fell seriously ill and lost his job. The family moved to the city of Galich, where his father became a clerk in the zemstvo council. In search of earnings, the boy went to Nizhny Novgorod to his uncle, who sold fur clothes. After two seasons of work at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, the merchant Vasily Kuzmich, from whom Ivan and his uncle took the goods, offered to find him a job in Moscow. So Ivan Sytin got into the bookshop of the merchant Pyotr Sharapov.

For several years he went from being a "boy" for various assignments to a clerk. Sent to the Nizhny Novgorod fair, Sytin managed to significantly increase sales in Sharapov's shop, organizing the sale of popular prints and books through itinerant traders in Nizhny Novgorod and surrounding provinces. The goods were sold so well that there was not enough of it and they had to buy up the missing goods in the shops of other merchants in Nizhny Novgorod.

In 1876 he married Evdokia Sokolova, the daughter of a merchant. With the help of Sharapov, he bought a lithographic machine and opened a printing workshop on Voronukhina Gora near Dorogomilovsky Bridge. When the Russian-Turkish war broke out, Sytin began selling lithographed battle paintings and maps of combat areas, which were updated after the arrival of fresh news. As a result, he was soon able to expand production: having bought a house on Pyatnitskaya Street, he installed two lithographic machines there. Since then, Pyatnitskaya Street has become the permanent address of Sytin's printing house. In 1882, Sytin's products were presented at the All-Russian Art and Industrial Exhibition and received silver medal.

In 1884 the ID Sytin Partnership was opened. It also opened its own bookstore at the Ilyinsky Gate. Most of the products were distributed through the villages. Sytin managed to raise the level of books published for the common people to a qualitatively new level. Soon Sytin got acquainted with Leo Tolstoy, who organized the publishing house "Posrednik" for "a semi-literate people who now have nothing to read, except for bad popular prints." The publishing house published books for the peasantry by Tolstoy, Garshin, Korolenko and other authors, as well as literature on agriculture, home economics and crafts. Engravings from paintings by prominent artists with explanatory texts were also published. All this was printed in different printing houses, but it was distributed mainly through the Sytinsk book-selling network. Every year Sytin published the "General Calendar", which was a universal reference book. The circulation of this calendar reached 21 million by 1916. In 1900, Sytin's publications received gold and silver medals at the World Exhibition in Paris.

In 1919, Sytin's publishing house was nationalized and received the name "The First Model Printing House". Sytin served as a consultant at the State Publishing House. During the NEP period, he briefly revived on a more modest scale his enterprise called the "Book Association of 1922", but it existed for only two years. Ivan Sytin died in Moscow on November 23, 1934.

What is famous for

He worked his way from a peddler to the largest book publisher in the country. Sytin's publishing house published cheap, but at the same time high-quality published books: textbooks, literature for children, works of classics, Orthodox literature, popular science publications. In particular, cheap collected works of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy were published. Since 1895, more than 40 books on natural sciences and humanities have been published in the "Library of Self-Education" series. By 1916, Sytin's firm had published 440 textbooks and manuals only for elementary schools. “Russian primer for teaching writing and reading Russian and Church Slavonic” has gone through more than sixty editions. Also, by 1916, Sytin published 21 types of calendars, the circulation of each exceeded a million copies. The publishing house has published several encyclopedias: “ Military encyclopedia"(18 volumes)," People's encyclopedia of scientific and applied knowledge "(21 volumes)," Children's encyclopedia "(10 volumes).

Sytin also published periodicals. In 1891 he bought the magazine Around the World and published it until 1917. As literary supplements, the magazine published works by Main Reed, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Arthur Conan Doyle and other popular writers. Since 1897, Sytin became the owner of the unprofitable newspaper " Russian word”, And soon it became popular. In 1916, the circulation exceeded the level of 700 thousand copies, and after February 1917 the circulation reached a record figure for Russia of 1 million 200 thousand. An illustrated supplement to the Russian Word was published - the Iskra magazine.

Also, Sytin's publishing house published a number of children's magazines: "Friend of Children", "Pchelka", "Mirok". In 1904, according to the project of the architect Adolf Erichson and engineer Vladimir Shukhov, a large four-storey printing house was built on Pyatnitskaya, equipped with the latest technology. There was a school of technical drawing and lithography at the printing house. By 1917, Sytin's publishing house owned a large chain of bookstores: four in Moscow, two in Petrograd, Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov, Kholuy, Yekaterinburg, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Irkutsk, Saratov, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Warsaw and Sofia ...

What you need to know

Ivan Sytin

Sytin's printing house became one of the centers of workers' protests during the 1905 revolution. In August, the workers of the printing house put forward a number of requirements for Sytin. They concerned the reduction of the working day to nine o'clock and the abolition of the order to pay typesetters only for a set of letters, but not for punctuation marks. According to Sytin's calculations, this measure gave 12% savings, but the workers of the printing house were unhappy, since with manual typing they spent the same effort getting from the printing office and installing a letter or a punctuation mark. Sytin agreed to a shorter working day, but refused to cancel his order not to pay for punctuation marks. As a result, a strike began at the printing house. It was supported by other enterprises and resulted in the All-Russian October political strike. On October 12-18, 1905, over two million people went on strike in various industries. Then they joked that the all-Russian strike began "because of the Sytinskaya comma."

In December 1905, Sytin's printing house became one of the places of battles between troops and workers' squads. In the printing house, the workers published an issue of Izvestia of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies, which included an appeal: "To declare in Moscow from Wednesday, December 7, at 12 noon, a general political strike and strive to translate it into an armed uprising." The building of the printing house, in which 600 members of the workers' squad were barricaded, was fired upon by artillery. As a result, the building burned down.

Direct speech

On the day of the declaration of war, in April 1877, I ran to Kuznetsky Most, bought a map of Bessarabia and Romania and told the master to copy 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. As the troops moved, the map also changed.

From the memoirs of Ivan Sytin

it interesting person... A large but completely illiterate publisher who came out of the people. The combination of energy along with lethargy and purely Suvorin's lack of character.

A.P. Chekhov about Ivan Sytin

The closeness to A.P. was of great importance to me. He gave me directions and advice that almost always came true. He persistently recommended that I publish a newspaper and in every way contributed to this. In moments of difficult adversity for the publishing house, he supported and encouraged me. I also used his advice when inviting newspaper workers. The times were hard then, and much of what A.P. advised could not be put into practice. To be fair: A.P. himself was a talented and thoughtful newspaperman. I cannot but point out one curious detail: A.P. especially insisted that the house for the newspaper's editorial office be acquired without fail on Tverskaya.

Ivan Sytin about A.P. Chekhov

Sometimes from the formless mass of people some special, strong, very able-bodied people are selected to the surface of life. These people are valuable not only for their work, but, perhaps, much more because they indicate to us the existence in the mass of the people of energy that is very rich, flexible and capable of great work, for mighty achievements. I well know how monstrously difficult the path of these people of the people is.<…>One of such rare people, I consider Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin, a man highly respected by me. He is too modest for me to allow myself to talk about his half-century work and assess its significance, but still I will say that it is a huge work. Fifty years have been devoted to this work, but the person who did it did not get tired and did not lose his love for work.<…>And I dearly wish Eve. Dm. Sytin good health, a long life for successful work, which his country will appreciate in due course. For we must hope that someday we will learn to value and respect human labor.

Maxim Gorky about Ivan Sytin

10 facts about Ivan Sytin

Ivan Sytin got into the book trade by accident. They promised to take him to a fur shop in Moscow, but there was no place there, but there was a vacancy in Sharapov's bookstore.
December 7, 1876 - the day Sytin opened his workshop - is considered the birthday of JSC "First Exemplary Printing House", the heiress of the Sytin enterprise.
For mass national publications, Sytin formulated three requirements: "very cheap, very elegant, very accessible in content."
Sergei Witte said about the newspaper Russkoe Slovo published by Sytin: "Even the government does not have such a speed of gathering information."
Sytin published special editions of the "Law of God" and anthologies on religious reading, intended for the Old Believers.
In 1911, at the expense of Ivan Sytin on Malaya Ordynka, the "Teacher's House" was built with a pedagogical museum, offices, a library and a large auditorium.

Sytin Ivan Dmitrievich

(born in 1851 - d. in 1934)

Newspaper and book magnate, educator, founder of the largest publishing company in pre-revolutionary Russia. He achieved the same success in publishing as his contemporaries J. Pulitzer and William R. Hirst in America and Lord Northcliffe in England.

Among the most famous names of Russian entrepreneurs who glorified Russia, the name of Sytin is rightfully one of the most honorable places. And not only because he made a huge fortune by his labor or possessed inexhaustible energy, foresight, scope and readiness to help those in need. But primarily because this native of poor Kostroma peasants, a merchant in the first generation, became one of the leading educators of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, the founder and head of the country's largest publishing and printing enterprise.

Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin lived a long, full of events life and remained in the memory of several generations of compatriots as a man who fought for the enlightenment of ordinary people. He said: “During my life, I have believed and believe in one force that helps me to overcome all the hardships of life. I believe in the future of Russian enlightenment, in the Russian people, in the power of light and knowledge. " Having set the enlightenment of the people as his life goal, Sytin achieved that by the beginning of the 20th century his enterprises produced a quarter of all printed publications in the country.

The future book publisher was born under serfdom on January 25, 1851 in the small village of Gnezdnikovo, Soligalichsky district, Kostroma province. He was the eldest of four children of the volost clerk Dmitry Gerasimovich Sytin and his wife Olga Alexandrovna. Since the family lived very poorly, at the age of 12, Vanyusha dropped out of school and went to work in Nizhny Novgorod, where his uncle traded in furs. The relative's business was not going well, so the boy, who, although he helped carry the skins and swept in the shop, was an extra mouth in the family. In this regard, two years later, his uncle sent him to Moscow, to a friend of the Old Believer merchant Pyotr Sharapov, who held two trade at the Ilyinsky Gate - furs and books. By a lucky coincidence, the new owner did not have a place in the fur shop where the relatives were sending the boy, and in September 1866 Sytin began to serve "in the book business."

Only four years later, the boy began to receive a salary - 5 rubles a month. Perseverance, perseverance, hard work liked the elderly owner, and the sociable student gradually became his confidant. He helped sell books and pictures, selected literature for numerous "offeni" - village booksellers, sometimes illiterate and judging the merits of books by their covers. Then Sharapov 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 of Russia.

In 1876, Ivan Sytin married Evdokia Ivanovna Sokolova, the daughter of a Moscow confectioner merchant, and received 4,000 rubles as a dowry for his wife. This allowed him, having borrowed another 3 thousand from Sharapov, to buy his first lithographic machine. At the end of the same year, he opened a printing workshop on Voronukhina Gora near Dorogomilovsky Bridge, which gave birth to a huge publishing business. It is this event that is considered the moment of birth of the largest printing company MPO "The First Exemplary Printing House".

Sytin's lithograph was more than modest, it occupied only three rooms, and at first her printed editions hardly differed from the mass production of the Nikolsky market. But Ivan Dmitrievich was very inventive: so with the beginning of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. he began to issue maps with the designation of hostilities and the inscription: “For newspaper readers. Manual and battle pictures ”. These were the first such mass publications in Russia. They had no competitors, the product was sold out instantly and brought fame and profit to the publisher.

In 1878, the lithograph became the property of Sytin, and the very next year he had the opportunity to buy his own house on Pyatnitskaya Street, equip a printing press at a new location and purchase additional printing equipment. Five years later, the publishing company “I. D. Sytin and K0 ", whose trading store was located on the Old Square. At first, the books were not very tasteful. Their authors, to please consumers, did not disdain plagiarism, subjected to "reworking" some works of the classics. Sytin said at that time: "By my instinct and guesswork, I understood how far we were from real literature, but the traditions of the popular print book trade were very tenacious, and they had to be broken with patience."

Very soon, Ivan Dmitrievich was able to establish not only the preparation and production of printed materials at his own printing facilities, but also the successful sale of popular prints. He has created a unique distribution network of free-wheeling traveling salesmen that spans the entire country. Later, publications of a different type began to spread along the same lines. The merit of Sytin was that he correctly determined which editions were the future, and gradually began to replace popular print with new literature in his sales system. Many educational publishing houses (Moscow Literacy Committee, Russian wealth”And others) it was Sytin who was entrusted with the production and sale of their publications for the people.

In the fall of 1884, Chertkov, representing the interests of Leo Tolstoy, entered a shop on Staraya Square and offered for publication the stories of N. Leskov, I. Turgenev and Tolstoy's "How People Live". These more meaningful books were supposed to replace the primitive editions that were published and be extremely cheap, at the same price as the previous ones - 80 kopecks per hundred. Sytin willingly accepted the offer. This is how the new publishing house of cultural and educational character "Posrednik" began its activity, in the first four years alone it published 12 million copies of elegant books with the works of famous Russian writers.

Ivan Dmitrievich was looking for the possibility of issuing other publications that would contribute to the education of the people. In the same 1884, at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, the first Sytinskiy "General calendar for 1885" appeared: "I looked at the calendar as a universal reference book, as an encyclopedia for all occasions." Business went well, and soon a second bookstore was opened in Moscow on Nikolskaya Street.

The following year, Sytin bought Orlov's printing press with five printing machines, and selected qualified editors. He entrusted the design of the calendars to first-class artists, and consulted Leo Tolstoy about the content. As a result, the "Universal Calendar" reached a huge circulation - 6 million copies, and tear-off "diaries" were also issued. The extraordinary popularity of the new products required a gradual increase in the number of calendar names: gradually their number reached 21, and each was issued in a multimillion circulation.

In 1887, 50 years have passed since the death of Pushkin, and independent publishers were able to publish his works free of charge. Sytin's firm immediately reacted to this event with the release of a gorgeous ten-volume collected works of the famous author. In the course of his work, Ivan Dmitrievich became close to progressive figures of Russian culture and learned a lot from them, making up for the lack of education. Together with public education figures D. Tikhomirov, L. Polivanov, V. Bekhterev, N. Tulupov and others. Sytin published brochures and pictures recommended by the Literacy Committee, published a series of folk books under the slogan "Pravda". Having become a member of the Russian Bibliographic Society at Moscow University in 1890, Ivan Dmitrievich took upon himself the labor and costs of publishing the journal "Book Science". By that time, his company was mass-circulating cheap editions of classics, numerous visual aids, literature for educational institutions and extracurricular reading, popular science series designed for a variety of tastes and interests, colorful books and fairy tales for children, children's magazines.

In 1889 the publishing house "Sytin's Partnership" was established with a capital of 110 thousand rubles. Ivan Dmitrievich quickly turned into a monopoly - the owner of the country's largest publishing and printing complex. He controlled prices in the market, having his own share of at least 20% in the production of a folk book. The monopoly position in the market made it possible to create the necessary reserves for technical re-equipment and modernization of production, and thanks to control over the distribution network, Sytin was able to calmly and systematically concentrate on the concentration of printing facilities in his hands.

Rotary printing presses that had appeared by this time in Europe cost an order of magnitude more expensive than flat-bed printing machines, but at the same time they sharply reduced the cost, subject to sufficient loading and large circulations. The decline in prices, in turn, meant a transition to a fundamentally different market - a mass market. First of all, Sytin became convinced of the potential capacity of this market. In the conditions of the crisis of 1891-1892, which led to a drop in demand for book products, tear-off calendars remained the most massive of the popular editions, for the production of which Sytin purchased the first two-color rotary machine in Russia.

Folk calendars - publicly available home encyclopedias from which a Russian person could learn everything they need - brought them to the publisher as all-Russian glory and excess profits. Further work in this direction meant not just monopolization, but the merging of private capital with the state. Over time, Sytin began to simply buy up publishing and printing projects that were interesting to him. In 1893 he met A.P. Chekhov, who insisted that Sytin start publishing a newspaper. Ivan Dmitrievich acquired the popular magazines "Niva" and "Around the World", the newspaper "Russkoe Slovo", which was the first to set up its own bureaux in various cities of the country, collaborated with talented journalists at the beginning of the 20th century. had a circulation of about a million copies. Sytin's corporation absorbed the printing houses of Vasiliev, Soloviev, Orlov, and put under its control the largest publishing houses of Suvorin and Marx.

Much attention was paid to advertising in the Partnership. Wholesale and retail catalogs were published annually, which made it possible to widely advertise their publications, ensure the timely sale of literature through wholesale warehouses and bookstores. For ten years, from 1893 to 1903, the turnover of Sytin's company increased 4 times, despite the consequences of the crisis of 1900–1902, which sharpened the competition to the limit. The inclusion of bankers on the board of the Partnership and the widespread use of bank loans at preferential interest rates allowed the monopolist to continue its offensive in the market. The company's dividend was the highest in the industry, and its shares (unlike those of other publishers) were listed on the stock exchange.

New projects required the expansion of the business, and by 1905, three buildings had already been erected for the next printing house on Pyatnitskaya and Valovaya streets. By this time, under the leadership of the architect Erichson, a four-storey house on Tverskaya was added and acquired a modern look. At the same time, the so-called "Sytinskaya Tower" appeared - a five-storey production building, which now houses a small newspaper rotation of the Izvestia publishing house. Strong reinforced concrete floors were installed in the buildings, which to this day can withstand any printing technique.

Sytin, a native of the people, always wanted to help his workers learn and teach their children, so he created a school of technical drawing and technical affairs at the printing house, the first graduation of which took place in 1908. When recruiting, the children of the Partnership employees were preferred, as well as those residents of villages and villages that had primary education. General education replenished in evening classes. The training and full content of the students was carried out at the expense of the company.

The educated Sytinsk workers became active participants in the revolutionary movement. They stood in the front ranks of the insurgents in 1905 and published the first issue of Izvestia of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies, which declared a general political strike. The printing house simultaneously printed classics and contemporaries, monarchists and Bolsheviks, liberals and conservatives. On neighboring machines, eulogies were printed to Nicholas II and the "Manifesto of the Communist Party", which in only two years of the revolution of 1905-1907. about 3 million copies were issued - Sytin printed what was in demand.

And one night retribution followed: one of the printing houses 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. It was a huge damage to the well-established business. Ivan Dmitrievich received sympathetic telegrams, but did not succumb to despondency. Within half a year, the building was rebuilt, the students of the art school restored the drawings and cliches, made the originals of new covers, illustrations, headpieces. New machines were purchased and work continued. By 1911, the company's turnover exceeded 11 million rubles. Then on the post general director Vasily Petrovich Frolov was appointed, who began his career in Sytinsk lithography as a typesetter.

Sytin incessantly conceived and carried out new editions: for the first time in Russia, the publication of multivolume encyclopedias was undertaken - Narodnaya, Children's and Military. In 1911, a magnificent edition "Great Reform" was published, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom, the next year - a multivolume anniversary edition "The Patriotic War of 1812 and Russian Society. 1812–1912 ", in 1913 - a historical study of the three hundredth anniversary of the House of Romanov -" Three centuries ".

The network of the Partnership's book-selling enterprises has also expanded. By 1917, Ivan Dmitrievich had 4 stores in Moscow and 2 in Petrograd, as well as bookstores in Klev, Odessa, Kharkov, Yekaterinburg, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Irkutsk, Saratov, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, in Warsaw and Sofia (together with Suvorin). 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 according to catalogs were carried out within 2-10 days, since the system of sending literature by cash on delivery was well established.

Systematically seeking to reduce the cost of his products, Ivan Dmitrievich from the 1910s. became interested in the industries that supplied the printing industry with raw materials and fuel. In 1913, he created a paper syndicate and thus ensured control over the prices of the paper supplied. Three years later, he formed a partnership in the oil industry, insuring himself against spikes in fuel prices. Finally, the final touch in the plan for the reorganization of mass printing was the Sytin project of creating a "Society for the Promotion and Development of Book Industry in Russia." It was assumed that the range of activities of this organization would be very wide - in addition to the production and sale of printed materials, the society was supposed to train specialists, supply equipment and consumables, organize printing engineering, as well as bibliography and the development of a network of libraries. Within the framework of the holding created under the guise of a public organization, further fusion of private business and state interests was assumed. In the period 1914-1917. the company produced 25% of all printed products of the Russian Empire.

In 1916, Moscow widely celebrated the 50th anniversary of Sytin's book publishing activity. The release of a perfectly illustrated literary and artistic collection "Half a century for a book (1866-1916)" was timed to this date, in the creation of which about 200 authors took part - representatives of science, literature, art, industry, and public figures. Among them were M. Gorky, A. Kuprin, N. Rubakin, N. Roerich, P. Biryukov and many others famous people that time.

Front February revolution Ivan Dmitrievich did not sell the business for a pittance and did not emigrate abroad. In 1917, when Kerensky was the prime minister of the Provisional Government of Russia, Sytin tried to encourage Moscow entrepreneurs to mitigate the growing crisis in society by large food purchases for the population. He urged them: “The hungry one should throw at least some kind of life preserver. The rich should make sacrifices. " Sytin himself wanted to allocate everything that he could then - 6 million rubles, Varvara Morozova promised to give 15 million, the rich man N.A.Vtorov - the same. It was believed that this way you can collect 300 million. But they did not find sympathy from anyone else. An equally unsuccessful attempt was made in St. Petersburg.

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. Ivan Dmitrievich perceived the October coup as inevitable and offered his services Soviet power... “The transition to the faithful owner, to the people of the entire factory industry, I considered a good thing and entered the factory as a free worker,” he wrote in his memoirs. “I was glad that the business, to which I gave a lot of energy in my life, received a good development - the book, under the new government, reliably went to the people.”

However, soon the activities of Sytin's enterprises were terminated and, in the course of the nationalization carried out in 1919, they were transferred to the State Publishing House. Ivan Dmitrievich refused Lenin's offer to take the post of head of the Soviet publishing department, citing a three-year education. The former Sytinskaya, and now the First State Model Printing House, regularly published Bolshevik literature. In the 1920s, at the dawn of the New Economic Policy, Ivan Dmitrievich, together with his sons, made a desperate attempt to revive his publishing life, registering the “Book Association of 1922” with Mosgubizdat, which existed for less than two years. The Soviet government did not allow Sytin to become active. But it did not pursue either. By a special resolution of the Revolutionary Military Council, his apartment was freed from compaction as the housing of a person who "did a lot for the social democratic movement." However, after Lenin's death, Sytin was offered to vacate the apartment, and he moved to house number 12 on Tverskaya Street, where he lived until the end of his days.

The Sytinskaya firm was originally conceived as a family business. The eldest of the sons of Ivan Dmitrievich Nikolai was his right hand, Vasily was the editor-in-chief of the Partnership, Ivan was in charge of the sale of products. Peter was sent to Germany to study economic sciences, and only the younger, Dmitry, became an officer, in civil war fought on the side of the Reds, was at the headquarters of Frunze.

Sytin was preparing his sons to transfer the matter into their hands over time. Well, when the company was gone, the brothers went to work in various Soviet publishing houses. Nicholas was repressed for preparing an album for the significant anniversary of the Red Army. The album contains portraits of those who have already fallen into disgrace, which caused irritation at the top. At the request of Gorky's first wife, Ekaterina Pavlovna Peshkova, Nikolai's prison was replaced with exile.

Ivan Dmitrievich remained faithful to the printing business - until his retirement in 1928, he advised the leadership of Gosizdat on the management of his former empire, helping to preserve the traditions of Russian printing under the new conditions. To the famous book publisher, as a sign of special gratitude for everything done, the new government gave the country's first personal pension of 250 rubles, which he received until his death.

Sytin all his life was absorbed in his work and sincerely considered himself a happy person. And he said to children and grandchildren: "When a gifted person does not love anything much, he does not rise above mediocrity." Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin died of pneumonia on November 23, 1934 in Moscow at the age of eighty-three years. No one publicly honored the memory of a person who has done so much for the country. Only relatives, close friends and several former employees accompanied the deceased to the Vvedenskoye cemetery. Sytin's grandchildren did not go to the publishing department.

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IVAN This story was told by Eva Livshits, the wife of my friend Grisha, a violist from the Zurich Opera. Once, in the early seventies, Eva, Grisha and his brother, the violinist Borya, left Vilnius and moved to Israel. A few years later the Livshits brothers, talented musicians, having won

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Ivan Lentsev - the CIA has nothing to do with it No matter how strong the external influence on The Russian Federation: from the financing of North Caucasian militants by Western and Middle Eastern special services to the "good news" carried to exhausted people wandering in the mountains and

Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin - the largest book publisher in Russia

On December 19, 1876, the largest book publisher of Russia, Ivan Dmitrievich SYTIN, started his own business.

The future book 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 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 most necessary things and 12-year-old Vanyusha had to go to work. His working life began at the Nizhny Novgorod Fair, where a tall, intelligent and diligent boy, beyond his years, helped a furrier to peddle fur products. He also tried himself in the role of a painter's apprentice. Everything changed when on September 13, 1866, 15-year-old Ivan Sytin arrived in Moscow with a letter of introduction 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 his countdown of the time of serving the Book.

The patriarchal merchant-Old Believer Pyotr Nikolayevich Sharapov, a well-known publisher of popular prints, songbooks and dream books at that time, became the first teacher, and then the patron saint of an executive teenager who did not disdain any black work, who carefully and diligently fulfilled any order of the owner. Only four years later Vanya began to receive a salary - five rubles a month. Perseverance, perseverance, hard work, the desire to replenish knowledge impressed the elderly owner who had no children. An inquisitive and sociable student of his gradually became Sharapov's confidant, helped sell books and pictures, picked up simple literature for numerous ofeni - village booksellers, 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 the Ukraine and to some cities and villages of Russia.

1876 was a turning point in the life of the future book publisher: having married Evdokia Ivanovna Sokolova, the daughter of a Moscow merchant-pastry chef and receiving four thousand rubles as a dowry, he borrowed three thousand from Sharapov and bought his first lithographic machine. On December 7, 1876, ID Sytin opened a lithographic workshop on Voronukhina Gora near Dorogomilovsky Bridge, which gave birth to a huge publishing business.

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". Sytin's first lithograph was more than modest - three rooms. At first, the printed editions differed little 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 military operations with an inscription; "For newspaper readers. Manual" and battle pictures. The product sold out instantly, bringing the publisher a decent income. In 1878, the lithography became the property of I.D.Sytin, and the next 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 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, Leo Tolstoy repeatedly visited, who talked with the women, looked closely at the young owner. In February of the same year, the publishing company "ID Sytin and Co." was established. 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 to "reworking" some works of the classics.

"With a feeling and a guess, I understood 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 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 - 80 kopecks per hundred. This is how the new publishing house of cultural and educational character "Posrednik" began its activity, since Sytin willingly accepted the offer. In the first four years alone, the "Posrednik" company 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.

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, and consulted Leo Tolstoy about the content of the calendars. 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. The 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.

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 published 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.

At the same time, ID 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, the magnificent edition "Great Reform" was published, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom. In 1912, a multi-volume jubilee edition "The Patriotic War of 1612 and Russian Society. 1812-1912". 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?" "Amfitheatrova - about the suppression of the" rioters "in 1905.

Sytin's active publishing activities often provoked dissatisfaction with the authorities. More and more often, 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. When enrolling in the school, preference was given to the children of employees and workers of the Partnership, 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.

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 an 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). 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 ID Sytin's book publishing activity. The Russian public widely celebrated this anniversary on February 19, 1917. Russian empire lived out the 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 perfectly 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 the right 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 national self-awareness. He took the Revolution as an inevitability, 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 as 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 the State Publishing House, then the implementation of various instructions from the Soviet government: he negotiated in Germany on the concession of the paper industry for the needs of Soviet publishing, on instructions from 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 stamp was printed under this stamp. short biography 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 a reception with Vladimir Ilyich. Apparently it was then - in Smolny - that the publisher presented the leader of the revolution with a copy of the anniversary edition "Half a Century for a Book" with the inscription: "Dear Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Ivan Sytin", which is now kept in personal library Lenin in the Kremlin.

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 (of four) Moscow apartment at number 274 on Tverskaya Street at number 38 (now Tverskaya Street, 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.

Great interest is constantly shown to the name and legacy of ID Sytin. They write articles and books about him, prepare dissertations.

But the most significant source for studying the life and work of the largest Russian book publisher and educator is his own memoirs and 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 book 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 a Book" appeared, reprinted in 1962. On the basis of this edition and under the same title, the memoirs of ID Sytin "Pages of the Experienced", together with the memoirs about him of his contemporaries, were published by the publishing house "Kniga" in 1978 (with the dedication of the First Model Printing House to the 100th anniversary of its founding by Sytin), and in 1985 the second revised edition of this book. Published two editions of K. Konichev's novel "Russian nugget": 1966 - Leningrad and 1967 - Yaroslavl. An interesting research book "ID Sytin" in the "Figures of the Book" series was published by the "Kniga" publishing house in 1983 (author - EA 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" has created a color documentary film "Life for a Book. ID Sytin" based on a script by Y. Zakrevsky and E. Osetrov (directed by Y. A. Zakrevsky). Millions of viewers got acquainted with it.

The memory of Sytin is also captured in memorial plaque on the house number 18 on Tverskaya street in Moscow, which was installed in 1973 and testifies that from 1904 to 1928 the famous book publisher and educator Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin lived here. In 1974, on the grave of ID Sytin at the Vvedenskoye cemetery, a monument was erected with a bas-relief of a book publisher (sculptor Yu. S. Dines, architect MM Volkov).

It is not known with certainty how many editions ID Sytin published in his entire life. However, many Sytynsk books, albums, calendars, textbooks are kept in libraries, collected by book lovers, and are found in second-hand bookshops.

Publishers can be divided into only two types: some work for existing demand, others create new readers. There are many of the former, the latter are rare. Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin belongs to the breadth of scope and cultural significance - an exceptional phenomenon.

A. Igelstrom

In the history of Russian book business, there was no figure more popular and more famous than Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin. Every fourth of the books published in Russia before the October Revolution was associated with his name, as well as the most widespread magazines and newspapers in the country, Bcerol, over the years of his publishing activity, he published at least 500 million books, the figure is huge even by modern standards. exaggeration), we can say that all literate and illiterate Russia knew him.Millions of children learned to read from 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.

The future book publisher was born in January 1851 in the village of Gnezdnikovo, Kostroma province, in the family of a volost clerk who came from economic peasants. Later he wrote in his notes: “My parents, constantly in need of the bare essentials, paid little attention to us. I studied at a rural school here during the reign. The textbooks were: Slavic alphabet, clock book, psalter and elementary arithmetic. The school was one-class, the teaching was complete carelessness ... I left school lazy and got a disgust for science and books. " This was the end of his education - until the very end of his days, Sytin remained a semi-literate person and wrote, disregarding all the rules of grammar. But he had an inexhaustible supply of energy, common sense and remarkable business acumen. These qualities helped him, overcoming all obstacles, achieve loud fame and make a huge fortune.

The family constantly needed the most necessary things and 12-year-old Vanyusha had to go to work. His working life began at the Nizhny Novgorod Fair, where a tall, intelligent and diligent boy, beyond his years, helped a furrier to peddle fur products. He also tried himself in the role of a painter's apprentice. Everything changed when on September 13, 1866, 15-year-old Ivan Sytin arrived in Moscow with a letter of introduction 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 his countdown of the time of serving the Book.

The patriarchal merchant-Old Believer Pyotr Nikolayevich Sharapov, a well-known publisher of popular prints, songbooks and dream books at that time, became the first teacher, and then the patron saint of an executive teenager who did not disdain any black work, who carefully and diligently fulfilled any order of the owner. Only four years later Vanya began to receive a salary - five rubles a month. Perseverance, perseverance, hard work, the desire to replenish knowledge impressed the elderly owner who had no children. An inquisitive and sociable student of his gradually became Sharapov's confidant, helped to sell books and pictures, picked up simple literature for numerous ofeni - village booksellers, 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 the Ukraine and to some cities and villages of Russia.

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. 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. There was nothing special about this lithograph 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 production will find its wide
buyer ".

Ivan Dmitrievich received a silver medal for his popular prints. He was proud of this award all his life and revered it above the rest, probably because it was the very first.

The following 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 lithography 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, Leo Tolstoy repeatedly visited, who talked with the women, looked closely at the young owner. In February of the same year, the 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”.

“With a sense and guess I understood how far we were from real literature,” wrote Sytin. “But the traditions of the popular print book trade were very tenacious and they 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 - 80 kopecks per hundred. This is how the new publishing house of cultural and educational character "Posrednik" began its activity, since Sytin willingly accepted the offer. In the first four years alone, the Posrednik firm issued 12 million copies of elegant books with the works of famous Russian writers, drawings on the covers of which were made by artists Repin, Kivshenko, Savitsky and others.

“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, and consulted Leo Tolstoy about the content of the calendars. 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 slogan "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.

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, in short term turned this publication into a large enterprise, inviting talented progressive journalists - Blagov, Amfiteatrov, Doroshevich, Gilyarovsky, G. Petrov, you. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko and others. The circulation of the newspaper at the beginning of the 20th century was approaching a million copies.

At the same time, ID 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, the magnificent edition “Great Reform” was published, dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom. In 1912, a multi-volume anniversary edition “The Patriotic War of 1612 and Russian Society. 1812-1912 ″. 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.

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). 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 ID Sytin's book publishing activity. 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 ID Sytin is driven by a lofty and bright goal - to give the people the cheapest and most necessary 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 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 the State Publishing House, then the implementation of various instructions from the Soviet government: he negotiated in Germany on the concession of the paper industry for the needs of Soviet publishing, on instructions from 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 was printed under this stamp. 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 a reception with 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.

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. In 1974, on the grave of ID Sytin at the Vvedenskoye cemetery, a monument was erected with a bas-relief of a book publisher (sculptor Yu. S. Dines, architect MM Volkov).

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 in the countryside primary school, however, 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 a family.

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 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 influx 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 dedicated 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. Such a success was ensured to the publication thanks to its position: sympathetic attitude towards the 1905 revolution, protests against national policy autocracy. After 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 Sytyn publications there were many low-grade literature such as oracles, dream books, etc. But their release was largely justified - to late XIX four-fifths of the population of Russia was still illiterate for a century.

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 submitted 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 waste 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 brand shops 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 lithographic business 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 occupied 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 put the ultimate goal its activity was the creation of 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 light hand 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's 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, which 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, and the process of nationalizing book publishing began 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 Council it was said that with his luboks Sytin "poisoned the Russian people" for many years.

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 15 children's books (with a circulation of 10 thousand copies each) in its former printing house 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 Association 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 the State Publishing House and the People's Commissariat for Food from matrices made from a set in Moscow, and also 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 the 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 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 popular prints from Sytin’s TV-vom previously issued” - “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 suggested 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.

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