Who is Ivan Sytin. Ivan dmitrievich sytin - a native of the kostroma land - the largest book publisher in russia

Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin was born on February 5, 1851 in the village of Gnezdikovo, Soligalichsky district. Ivan was the eldest of four children of Dmitry Gerasimovich and Olga Alexandrovna Sytin. His father came from economic peasants and, as the best student, was taken from an elementary school to the city to be trained as a volost clerk and was an exemplary senior clerk in the district all his life. Father's roots went to the village of Konteevo, Buysky district. He was an intelligent and capable man, therefore he was terribly burdened by the monotonous position, from time to time he drank with grief. In his memoirs, Sytin writes: “Parents, constantly in need of the bare essentials, paid little attention to us. I studied in a rural school, here, under the volost government. The textbooks were the Slavic alphabet, a clock book, a psalter, and elementary arithmetic. The school was one-class, the teaching was complete carelessness, at times - severity with the inclusion of punishments with flogging, kneeling on peas and slapping on the head, for hours - kneeling in the corner. The teacher sometimes appeared drunk in the classroom. The result of all this was the complete licentiousness of the students and disregard for the lessons. I left school lazy and got disgusted with science and books ... ”During one rather prolonged seizure, Dmitry Sytin was fired from his job.

The family moved to Galich. Life has gotten better. Ivan's position also changed. He was entrusted to Uncle Vasily, a furrier. Together they went to a fair in Nizhny Novgorod to sell fur clothes. Ivan's business went well: he was a striker, helpful, worked hard, which served his uncle and the owner from whom they took the goods for sale. By the end of the fair, he received his first earnings of 25 rubles, and they wanted to "assign" him to Yelabuga as "boys for a painter". But my uncle advised my parents to wait with the choice of a place. Vanya stayed at home for a year. And in the next fair season, the merchant for whom Ivan worked, noticed that the boy was doing well, and took him with him to Kolomna. From there, 15-year-old Ivan Sytin arrived in Moscow with a letter of 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 counting down the time of serving the book.

It would seem that he is a man with three grades of education, with a complete disgust for science and books. What future awaits him? But thanks to his diligence and hard work, he was able to move to Moscow and prove himself there.

The path to fame

Not an easy path to fame begins with Ivan Dmitrievich in the book and picture shop of the Moscow merchant Pyotr Sharapov. The merchant was mainly engaged in furs, paid little attention to books, entrusting them to clerks. The book production consisted mainly of popular prints of religious content. Every year, small traders came to Sharapov for popular prints. Then they delivered book products across the Russian provinces along with household items and cheap jewelry.

Ivan sold books, and also ran on the water, brought firewood and cleaned the owner's boots. Sharapov looked closely at Ivan, and from the age of seventeen, Sytin began to accompany carts with popular prints, traded at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, and got to know the women better. Soon he became an assistant to the head of a shop in Nizhny Novgorod. He managed to create a whole network of offeni peddlers, the success exceeded all expectations.

In 1876, ID Sytin got married, received his wife's dowry and a loan from his owner, bought a manual press and began printing popular prints. First together with my wife, then I was able to take assistants. Ivan Dmitrievich immediately realized that the success of the business practically depends on the quality of the product. Therefore, even for a simple and uncomplicated splint, he spared no expense. He selected the best draftsmen, printers, used the best paints and subjects. In addition, unlike his competitors, he began to offer broader credit and targeted selection of literature depending on the area of ​​their activity. Therefore, his books were bought both in the village and in the city. Success was brought to him by popular prints of military operations during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877 - 78.

In the winter of 1883, ID Sytin opened his first bookstore at the Ilyinsky Gate. In February 1883, the ID Sytin and Co Partnership was founded with a fixed capital of 75 thousand rubles. D. A. Voropaev, V. L. Nechaev and I. I. Sokolov became Sytin's companions. The founders are beginning to think seriously about publishing a national calendar. Ivan Dmitrievich understood that he needed a universal reference book for the peasant. Therefore, he had been preparing for such a serious publication for several years.

In 1884, the first Sytinsky "General Russian Calendar" was published, which was quickly sold out. Deciding to publish a tear-off calendar, Sytin turns to Leo Tolstoy for advice, who recommends him as a compiler of the writer NA Polushin, a connoisseur of folk life. The calendar, developed by Sytin together with Polushin, was a huge success.

Knowing the needs of the "reader from the people", Sytin believed that it was not necessary for him to create a special "people's peasant" literature, as some public figures of his time believed. The people needed affordable works of the classics: A. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, I. S. Turgenev and others. In November 1884 Sytin met V.G. Chertkov, a friend and confidant of Leo Tolstoy. At the suggestion of the writer, the Posrednik publishing house was organized, which in the first four years alone published 12 million copies of books. They were often decorated with drawings by I.E.Repin, V.I.Surikov, A.D. Kivshenko, and others.

Publishing activity expanded, Sytin's partnership became a solid company. In 1892, Sytin acquired the rights to publish the magazine Around the World. Many famous writers were involved in cooperation: K.M. Stanyukovich, D.N.Mamin-Sibiryak, V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko and others. The supplement to the magazine published works of foreign classics - Main Reed, Jules Berne, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas.

In 1893, a new building of the printing house of the Sytin partnership was built on Valovaya Street, shops were opened in Moscow in the house of the "Slavyansky Bazaar", in Kiev - in Gostiny Dvor on Podol, in Warsaw (1895), Yekaterinburg and Odessa (1899). The former partnership was transformed into the "Highest approved ID Sytin Printing, Publishing and Book Trade Association" with a fixed capital of 350 thousand rubles.

In 1902, Ivan Dmitrievich began to publish the newspaper "Russian Word", the idea of ​​which belonged to A.P. Chekhov, who was friends with Sytin. The newspaper has become one of the most popular in Russia. The year 1905 was approaching. The position of the newspaper was quite definite. In one of the editorial articles, she wrote: “We set ourselves the goal of awakening the self-consciousness of the people, revealing ever deeper and deeper covenants of truth and calling the reader to implement these covenants, to embody them in the life around us. New ways of life and new horizons are opening up ... The needs of the peasantry, the needs of the factory worker, the needs of all working classes will be the subject of special attention of our newspaper ... Calling everyone to common cultural work and promoting the fair distribution of the benefits of culture among all the sons of Russia without distinction of the tribe, religion and estates - this is the word with which the "Russian Word" went and goes to its readers. On the banner of our newspaper: Brotherhood, Peace, Free Labor, Common Good ”.

The Black Hundreds called Sytin's printing house "hornet's nest", and its workers - "the initiators of the revolution." On the night of December 12, 1905, by order of the Moscow mayor, Admiral Dubasov, the printing house was set on fire. Almost the entire building burned down, equipment, printed books, clichés for illustrations were destroyed. Ivan Dmitrievich was very upset about the loss of the printing house. In addition, the insurance company refused to pay damages. But the best people of Russia sincerely sympathized with the publisher. Sytin bravely survived the defeat of the printing house. A year later, it was restored.

By 1916, Sytin's publishing house reached the heights of fame. Reading Russia honored him in connection with the 50th anniversary of his activity. A whole book of congratulations and grateful responses to the hero of the day has been published under the title “Half a century for a book”.

After the revolution of 1917, ID Sytin handed over his publishing houses and trading enterprises to Soviet power, but he did not leave his favorite business. As the largest book publisher in pre-revolutionary Russia, publishing 25% of book production, he was invited to work at the State Publishing House. He organized an art exhibition in the United States and ran a small printing house. In total, Ivan Dmitrievich worked in the book business for over fifty years.

ID Sytin's activities covered many areas: at the publishing house he organized a school for training printers, he was interested in paper production. With only three years of education, but with a business savvy and an inquisitive mind, he was able to become a world famous book publisher.

Educational activity of I.D.Sytin

Sytin chose a calendar as the initial means of enlightening the people, in which he saw not so much an entertaining book as a conductor of culture. The publishing house “ID Sytin's Partnership” founded by him managed to make the calendar a universal reference book. His calendars contained everything: saints, railway stations, government and much more. Such a calendar has become a window into the world of culture for the “reader from the people”. The Sytinsk publishing house produced 25 types of calendars with a total circulation of 12 million copies. They were sold at a low price, which brought losses to the publisher. But Sytin's gain was in something else - in the enlightenment of the Russian people. For the first time, articles on various branches of knowledge appeared in calendars. They are favorably distinguished by their bright appearance and an abundance of drawings in the text. The calendars were sold at a whopping two million a year. The calendar has become part of the everyday life of ordinary people. Sytin began to receive a lot of letters with various tips and advice, which is lacking in the calendars. Of course, there was simplicity and naivety in them, but there were also good advice and suggestions. Therefore, all letters were studied, and it was thanks to them that the calendars became more interesting and meaningful.

Luboks brought particular popularity to I.D.Sytin. Both peasants and urban workers willingly bought them. In the splint, Sytin quite rightly saw a particle of folk culture and was very careful about it. Over the years, he formed the so-called popular "classics", selecting from a multitude of works the most meaningful and beloved by the people. Popular publications played an important role in educating the people, as they aroused interest in the book. "The picture was pulling the book ..." - wrote ID Sytin.

The Sytinskaya book has become a completely special phenomenon in Russian culture. The famous writer and teacher V. Vakhterov wrote about this: “His books are cheap, portable ... they could easily penetrate where there are no lectures ... no universities”. None of his predecessors managed to penetrate the circle of popular reading, so deeply study the tastes and needs of the "reader from the people." The "mediator" gave the "reader from the people" more than 1200 titles of books with prices ranging from half a kopeck to a ruble and three rubles, which were produced in huge editions at that time. The publications of "Posrednik" penetrated to the farthest corners of Russia.

The merit of ID Sytin is also great in providing the institutions of public education with books and teaching aids. Textbooks and manuals for schools were very expensive, produced in small editions. Many schools did not have libraries. To create an educational book, Sytin and other public figures established the School and Knowledge Society. And from 1896 he began to finance the work of the Department of Public School Libraries. Sytinski textbooks were sent to the public school in a stream and made up hundreds of school libraries. Sytin's publishing house has issued special reference catalogs for parents, teachers, and library compilers. Since 1895, the Library of Self-Education began to be published, which included books on history, philosophy, economics and natural science. Sytin provided many public schools with preferential terms for the purchase of books and manuals, up to the setting of prices by themselves. In 1910, at the expense of Sytin, the first Teacher's House in Russia was founded. It is also necessary to pay tribute to the fact that the publisher always remembered that he was a native of the Kostroma land. It is known that for a number of schools in the Kostroma province, he sent free periodicals, including the newspaper Russkoye Slovo published by him. In several towns of the province there were bookstores that distributed his books. In 1899, especially for Kostroma, Sytin published a catalog of the book warehouse "Kostromich", which provided the province with books, newspapers and magazines. Out of almost 4000 items in the catalog, more than 600 were offered by Sytin's Partnership and Mediator.

Born into the family of the volost clerk Dmitry Gerasimovich and Olga Alexandrovna Sytin, the eldest of four children.

Young Ivan finished 3 classes of a rural school. At the age of 12, he began working as a seller from a furrier's tray at the Nizhny Novgorod fair, was a painter's apprentice, and took on any small work. At the age of 13 he moved to Moscow and on September 13, 1866 he got a job in the bookshop of the furrier merchant PN Sharapov as a “boy”. Soon he attracted the attention of the owner for his diligence and ingenuity.

In 1876, Ivan Sytin married Evdokia Ivanovna Sokolova, from a merchant family, taking a dowry of 4,000 rubles. Its former owner P.N. Sharapov gave him another 3,000 rubles in debt. This money was used to purchase a lithographic machine for printing popular prints. On December 7, a lithographic workshop was opened on Voronukhina Gora in Dorogomilov.

The first products of the Sytyn printing house that brought financial success were maps of military operations during the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. The assortment was personally formed by Ivan Sytin and consisted of popular prints drawn by such famous artists as V.V. Vereshchagin and V.M. Vasnetsov. More than 50 million titles of very high quality printed materials were produced per year: portraits of kings, nobles, generals, illustrations for fairy tales and songs, religious, everyday, humorous pictures. The price was microscopic, and the main distributors were itinerant traders, who were given long-term loans and good conditions.

In 1889, Sytin bought a house on Pyatnitskaya and equipped a printing house there - the current First Model Printing House.

Fame came to the publisher Sytin in 1882 after being awarded the bronze medal of the All-Russian Industrial Exhibition for his printed products. The first bookstore of the publisher Sytin was opened on January 1, 1883 in Staraya Square, and in February a partnership on the faith "ID Sytin and Co." with a capital of 75,000 rubles was founded.

In 1884, the Posrednik publishing house was created, which published the works of Leo Tolstoy, IS Turgenev, N.S. Leskov and other Russian writers at very affordable prices for buyers. In the same year, the "General Calendar for 1885" was presented at the Nizhny Novgorod exhibition, which became a family reference manual, and opened a whole series of calendars: "Small universal", "Kiev", "Modern", "Old Believers". The circulation exceeded 6 million copies the next year, and in 1916 one type of calendars was published, with a circulation of more than 21 million.

Since 1980, ID Sytin began to publish the journal "Knigovedenie". In 1891 he bought the magazine Around the World, which became a favorite reading among young people. Literary supplements to it were published works by M. Reed, J. Verne, A. Dumas, A. Conan-Doyle. In 1897 he began to publish the newspaper "Russian Word" - a subscription for a year cost only 7 rubles, and by 1917 the circulation was more than 1 million copies.

During this period, Ivan Sytin became the largest Russian publisher, producing high-quality and cheap textbooks, children's books, classical essays, and religious literature. Since 1895, he published the "Library of Self-Education" - a total of 47 books on history, philosophy, economics, natural science were published. For children, alphabets, fairy tales of different peoples, stories, short stories, collections of poems, and author's fairy tales of A.S. Pushkin were published. V.A. Zhukovsky, brothers Grimm, C. Perrot. Children's magazines "Friend of Children", "Pchelka", "Mirok" were published. By 1916, more than 440 textbooks and manuals for the elementary grades of the school had been published, and the Primer had been reprinted for 30 years.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, popular encyclopedias were published: "Military Encyclopedia", "People's Encyclopedia of Scientific and Applied Knowledge", "Children's Encyclopedia".

In 1904, a large 4-storey printing house was built according to the design of A.E. Erickson on Pyatnitskaya Street with the latest equipment. The books were distributed through their own bookstores in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Kharkov, Warsaw, Yekaterinburg, Voronezh, Rostov, Irkutsk. A school of technical drawing and lithography was founded at the printing house. Particularly talented students from her moved to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, receiving higher education. In 1911, the "Teacher's House" was built on Malaya Ordynka, with a museum, library, auditorium.

In 1914, Ivan Sytin's printed products accounted for a quarter of all printed circulation in Russia.

After the establishment of Soviet power, all of Sytin's enterprises were nationalized, and he himself represented the Land of the Soviets abroad: he arranged an exhibition of Russian paintings in the United States, negotiated concessions with Germany. He was assigned a personal pension in 1928 and provided with an apartment on the street. Tverskoy.

(1851-1934) Russian entrepreneur and book publisher

Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin did not acquire all-Russian fame immediately. Only thanks to everyday work did he become what he remained in the history of culture of the 20th century - one of the most interesting and successful Russian publishers, whose name has become a kind of symbol. True, later readers somehow ceased to realize the authorship of many of his inventions. Now, few people know that it was Sytin who owns, for example, the idea of ​​publishing cheap books, as well as the famous tear-off calendars. He managed to expand his enterprise in a country, the majority of whose population was illiterate, but was introduced to knowledge thanks to his efforts.

Ivan Sytin was born in the village of Gnezdnikovo, Soligalichsky district, Kostroma province, where his father worked as a volost clerk. When Ivan was five years old, the family moved to Soligalich, where by that time two of his uncles had settled.

After graduating from elementary school in Soligalich, his uncle took Ivan as a delivery boy to the Nizhny Novgorod fair. There Ivan went to a well-known merchant-furrier in the city. He helped the owner so well that after the end of the fair he took the smart boy to his place in Kolomna.

Several weeks later, he recommended Ivan to the Moscow merchant P. Sharapov, who had two trade in Moscow - book and fur. There was no room in the fur store, and in the fall of 1866 Ivan began working as a boy in Sharapov's book and picture shop in Moscow. Initially, he helped pack the goods, but soon began to replace the sellers.

Ivan Sytin worked for Sharapov for ten years, and during this time he went all the way from a peddling boy to the chief clerk in a store. Gradually, Sharapov instructed him to conduct the entire sale of popular prints. He supplied printed products to traveling tradesmen - ofen. To better study the market, Sytin not only sold popular prints, but also traveled with traders across Russia and Little Russia for several years.

At the Nizhny Novgorod fair, where he also traveled annually on behalf of Sharapov, he came up with the idea of ​​teaching several peddlers of books and popular prints how best to trade these products. Five years later, around a hundred merchants united around Ivan Sytin. This kind of artel also gave a good profit.

After the wedding - Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin, on the advice of Sharapov, married the daughter of his acquaintance, a pastry chef - he decided to start his own business. With his wife's dowry and borrowed money, he bought a printing press and opened his own lithograph for the publication of popular prints. Due to the good quality of workmanship and low prices, his goods were in demand and brought good profits. A year later, Sytin not only paid off his debts, but also completely separated from Sharapov and opened his own shop at the Ilyinsky Gate. And a few months later, he founded a book publishing company called "Sytin and Co".

The main activity of the printing house was the production of cheap and generally available products. These were primarily popular prints, as well as various cheap editions. Since 1884, Ivan Sytin began to cooperate with V. Chertkov, the secretary of Leo Tolstoy, and soon all publications of the Posrednik publishing house founded with the participation of L. Tolstoy began to be printed in his printing house.

But the main products of Sytin were still prints. This genre of book production was well known to the buyer. In Russian huts one could often find elegant pictures with an unpretentious plot and a laconic signature under them.

Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin was distinguished not only by his special acumen and enterprise, but also by his craving for everything new. At first, he attracted famous artists - Viktor Vasnetsov and K. Mikeshin - to work on popular prints. But the main thing is that he was the first to use the most modern technique for printing - a multicolor lithographic machine. Initially, Sytin bought cars abroad, but at the 1882 exhibition he had already shown the first model made for him in Russia. In addition to popular prints, the publisher produced colorfully designed calendars. He also first introduced tear-off calendars and began to make annual table books for reading.

In addition, Ivan Sytin first began to study the market and print those paintings that were in demand. He soon realized that some stories were popular in the city, and completely different in the villages. So gradually he began to publish popular prints targeted at a specific customer. Thanks to his own printing house and large circulation, he could keep low wholesale prices, and this determined the high demand for his publications.

In addition to paintings, Sytin also reformed the book market: instead of popular prints of fairy tales and stories about Bove the King and Eruslan Lazarevich, he began to print cheap books with works by Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov. They had bright covers and were illustrated by popular artists. Since 1901, a special drawing school under the direction of the artist N.A.Kasatkin worked at his publishing house.

A special passion of Ivan Sytin was children's literature. He saturated the market with cheap editions of primary school textbooks, fairy tales, educational books and translations. But the greatest fame was brought to him by the "Children's Encyclopedia" in 10 volumes - the first edition of this kind, published in Russia.

Serial publications and multivolume editions occupied a significant place in Sytin's activities. These were encyclopedias - "People's", "Children's", "Military", as well as the famous series "The Patriotic War of 1812 and Russian Society." All these publications were distinguished by excellent printing and high scientific quality.

From 1897 to 1917, Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin also published the newspaper "Russian Word". He started this business on the advice of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Gradually increasing, the newspaper's circulation reached 740 thousand copies. In addition to the newspaper, the publisher began to print mass magazines - "Around the World", "Iskra". In 1916, he acquired the majority of shares in the publishing house of A.F. Marx and became the leading producer of mass book production in Russia. He owned two of the largest printing houses - newspaper and book (now it is the First Model Printing House). They were equipped with the most advanced printing technology. In addition, Sytin opened 16 bookstores in different cities of Russia. He was one of the first Russian publishers to enter the world market.

In 1917, Ivan Sytin transferred his newspaper and printing house to the state, and in May 1919 all his other enterprises were nationalized. For more than five years Sytin worked as the director of his former printing house. On behalf of Anatoly Lunacharsky, he traveled abroad to negotiate the supply of paper and the organization of book exhibitions. But working with the new authorities became more and more difficult, and in 1924 Sytin's publishing house was completely closed. He had less and less strength, and in 1928 Ivan Dmitrievich became a pensioner. He spent the rest of his life in Moscow.

Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin was never shy about not receiving any systematic education. He studied all his life, although sometimes he found himself in uncomfortable positions. Once a young man came to him and offered to buy a story. Sytin liked the text and bought it for five rubles. Only later in the printing house it became clear that he was offered ... a story by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol. And the young man turned out to be the writer V.M.Doroshevich, who was beginning at that time, with whom he subsequently had excellent relations. Ivan Sytin told about his life and meetings in his memoirs "Life for a Book"

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, eventful life and remained in the memory of several generations of compatriots as a man who fought for the enlightenment of the common 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. A 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 trades 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. Further, 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, Russkoe Bogatstvo, etc.) entrusted Sytin 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 producing massively 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 was 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 their publisher both all-Russian fame and super-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 was replenished in evening classes. The training and full content of the students was carried out at the expense of the company.

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. At the same time, Vasily Petrovich Frolov was appointed to the post of general director, 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 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 envisaged. 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, public figures. Among them were M. Gorky, A. Kuprin, N. Rubakin, N. Roerich, P. Biryukov and many other famous people of that time.

Before the 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 Revolution as inevitable 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 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 to publishing life, registering in Mosgubizdat the "Book Association of 1922", 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 youngest, Dmitry, became an officer, fought on the side of the Reds in the civil war, was in 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.