At the beginning of the twentieth century, the richest merchants of Moscow, there were about twenty to twenty-five families: seven of them under the name Morozov. The most famous of all the capitalās merchants was Savva Morozov, whose biography does not depict to us at all a wealthy tyrant, a soulless nouveau riche, but an enlightened person striving for spirituality.
Money
The exact size of the capital of this family no one knows for certain. A manufacturing partnership, where Savva Morozov, whose biography is now āunder the magnifying glassā, was not even the owner, was in the top three most profitable businesses in the country. He was a director. He received a salary not only large, but huge. Two hundred and fifty thousand rubles a year received Savva Timofeevich Morozov. The biography began with a strong blow of fate. In those same years, the Minister of Finance was paid exactly ten times less, but the tsar also added a lot from his pocket so that Witte would not be offended.
The founders of the Morozovs āwork - Savvaās grandfathers and father ā did not have even a small part of that remarkable European education that Savva received. They had no other interests besides production, and they had no idea about artistic tastes. They didnāt share with anyone. Rather, on the contrary, nobles were world-eaters. But production was raised by everyone to envy. But the biography of Savva Morozov turned out different. He knew how to make money (and he loved), and social issues worried him no less.
Grandfather Savva
Savva Vasilievich was born a serf in the Vladimir province. A very long and difficult road lay ahead of him to the largest textile magnate. The peasant was with a business note: he got an almost worthless machine, weaved lace and ribbons on it with his own hands, alone, and then from time to time went to Moscow on foot for a hundred miles to sell his goods to buyers. Gradually expanded production, switched to cloth and cotton.
I didnāt get acquainted with artists, I didnāt learn to read, but I saved up money. A happy fate accompanied him, even when Napoleonās army ravaged half of Russia and burned Moscow. Factories burned down, customs gave the go-ahead, and the Russian cotton industry began to emerge. The nobles of Ryumin gave Savva Vasilievich free for seventeen thousand rubles (if you buy an estate for this money, it will not be so small. This is huge, unthinkable money for those times). And very quickly, Grandfather Savva became a merchant of the first guild.
Rogozhskoe cemetery
Elder Morozov, even in extreme old age, superbly conducted business, from which he did not depart even for a day. He never learned a single letter, he could not read. However, this did not stop him from acquiring the largest Nikolsky manufactory in the country. He thought about descendants: from their first step he cared to the last.
Where now in Moscow the Enthusiasts Highway (formerly Vladimirsky Trakt), in the nineteenth century a village of Old Believers was formed. Savva Morozov Sr. also adhered to the old faith all his life and believed earnestly, in a peasant way. Therefore, in the Old Believer Rogozhsky cemetery, he bought a place for himself and his descendants.
Old Believers were rarely poor, but often rich. The Rogozh Old Believers especially, among them there were many manufacturers and merchants. They did not spare money for the churches, but there were two of them at the cemetery: for church books, for ancient icons of the Stroganov and Rublev letters, for the sacristy. And the candles in front of the icons were not simple, there were up to twelve kilograms in weight. Savva Vasilievich bought a place in this cemetery, where four generations of merchants Morozov have now rested. That was the purposeful elder Savva Morozov. The biography is short, but very instructive.
Father Timothy
The youngest son of Savva Vasilyevich especially pleased his parent. After the forties of the nineteenth century, he admitted to the manufacture affairs he brought a lot of useful things to production. The heir to the resourceful, agile, cunning, like Odysseus, Timothy Savvich took over the entire cycle of the factories. He bought a countryman in Central Asia along with cotton fields and ceased to depend on imports, upgraded equipment, learned his own specialists at the Imperial Technical School and drove the expensive English into the neck.
He increased his fatherās capitals, for which he gained enormous prestige in business circles of the highest level. State manufactory adviser, vowel in the Moscow City Duma, chairman of the Exchange Committee and the Merchant Bank. Moreover, a member of the board of the Kursk Railway. I didnāt finish any universities, but I already knew the diploma. The bloodsucker from him turned out to be no worse than his grandfather: at the manufactories the work was hellish, the workers were crushed with fines, wages were rarely and not fully paid. With all this, Timofei Savvich set a bad example for his son: he donated not only to churches, but also to universities, and he gave a lot to publishers.
Strike
Morozov-average loved an authoritarian management style. The manufacture was for him and the subordinates a specific principality, even with his own police. No one was allowed to sit in the office except the owner, no matter how long the meetings and reports took up. In the new 1885, workers of factories rose right on Christmas Day, staged a strike, called in the textbooks the "Morozov Strike" and the first organized speech of the workers.
Two weeks of production stood. Timofey Morozov was beside himself with indignation. The unrest of the people was suppressed, the instigators were tried in a crowded room with an extremely heated atmosphere. The public was not indignant at the defendants, it came out with righteous anger over the shamelessness of the manufacturers. And Timothy Morozov was called as a witness to this court.
Shame
The biography of Savva Timofeevich Morozov began precisely then. With horror and terrible shame, he recalled to the end of his life how his father went to the witness place shouting: āBloodsucker! Monster!ā, How they looked at his father with binoculars, how they pointed fingers at him. And Timofei Savvich, probably for the first time in his life, was confused.
He started to fuss, stumbled on a flat floor and burst his head on the floor right in front of the dock. The noise in the hall was such that the meeting was interrupted. A month later, Timofei Savvich just got out of bed already forever sick, plagued, sharply aged and angry. I didnāt want to hear about the factory anymore: to sell it, to put money in the bank and forget about all this as soon as possible. Savva Timofeevichās mother didnāt give it, she rewrote the entire manufactory for herself, made her son the director.
Maria Fedorovna
Savva Morozov, a brief biography cannot convey all the blows of fate, was brought up in religious asceticism and, perhaps, excessive rigor. How else could a freethinker be born in a future capitalist? In Trekhsvyatitelsky Lane there was a Morozovās house with a greenhouse, garden, flower beds, and a chapel only for the family, where Old Believers priests coming from the Rogozh community held daily services. And the whole huge, of twenty bedrooms, not illuminated by electricity house was held tightly tightly in a fist by one woman.
The mother of a secular and very free man, which later became Savva Morozov, his personal biography is such that he would cause her mother to faint, if she had known about it beforehand, she would sometimes be a perfect self-made and pious to the last degree. Always surrounded by engraftment she had no need to save in anything, but she was odd. Even underwear was not enough for children. There were no secular newspapers, magazines and books in the house, she had never been to the theater, music had not sounded in the house, for demonicism was all according to Old Believer concepts. She also did not use the bathroom, but she loved colognes.
Education
Despite all this, the changes in the Old Believer life were violated to the ground. All eight of Morozov's children had tutors and governesses with secular manners, with music and foreign languages. True, for any failure of the children mercilessly fought with rods according to the good old house-building traditions. Everything was chosen here by such a determined person as Savva Morozov. Biography, personal life, his whole future became more clear to him day by day. Initially, the boy was not obedient: he started smoking and moving away from God back in the gymnasium.
At Moscow University, he was interested in studying physics and mathematics, philosophy and history (Klyuchevsky's lectures), so he continued his studies in England, in Cambridge. He wrote a dissertation and studied textile business. And after the Morozov strike he returned home and took over production management at the age of twenty-five. The capitalist from him turned out to be just wonderful. Equipment was discharged from England; Savva abolished fines, raised salaries, and built dormitories for workers. Timofei Savvich called his son a socialist and was afraid that he would break his neck with such an approach to factory business.
Scandalous successes
The Morozov Partnership flourished nonetheless. Nikolskaya manufactory was already in third place in the whole country in terms of profitability of production. Morozov fabrics were in greater demand than English, even abroad, even in China and Persia. Although Savva Morozov could not dispose of everything on his own, the photo and biography suggest: he still disposed of it, retroactively notified his mother, the mistress of the manufactory, but most often did not. Not the factory alone amazed mother son.
On the love front, Savva also confidently won. The Old Believers Morozov have never encountered such a scandal. He fell in love with a married woman, and even the wife of his relative. Divorce in Russia has always been nonsense, and even the Old Believers could not tolerate this at all, for them it was monstrous and unacceptable. However, such was the stubborn manās biography as Savva Morozov. The family was disgraced, and the wedding took place.
Zinaida Grigorievna
Morozov chose a woman for himself by the type of mother: imperious, arrogant, conceited, and not ambitious and very smart. She loved luxury, and her husband indulged her in this. On Spiridonovka street in house number five, built specifically for a young wife, they settled. Now the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia does not hesitate to hold receptions, by the way. And then receptions were arranged by Zinaida Grigorievna. Her, though hereditary, but still merchandise, was visited by persons of the imperial family and the most prominent people of the state. Although, in general, she did not become a high-born lady. Savva Timofeevich Morozov, whose biography was based on merchant capital, did not always understand his wife's aspirations, but indulged all her undertakings.
The decoration of the house resembled an expensive china shop. Only Savvaās study and bedroom looked like a bachelorās haven, except for a bust of Ivan the Terrible from Antokolskyās workshop, not a single piece of jewelry was there. But the wife frolic. For example, taking the imperial family at the Nizhny Novgorod Fair, he received a remark that the train of his wifeās dress is much longer than that of the tsarina, and this is a very big mistake regarding tact and modesty. But by then, Savva didn't care what his wife was doing. This marriage was not saved even by the children of Savva Morozov. The biography here does not put an end, because the most interesting of the famous manufactory is yet to come. And his wife, by the way, finally became a noblewoman after the death of Savva.
Moscow Art Theater
Morozov strictly took into account his every ruble, but he never spared money for good deeds: publishing books, newspapers, helping the Red Cross, and much more. But his main business, for which he will be remembered with gratitude for a long time, is the construction and arrangement of the Moscow Art Theater, where Savva spent more than three hundred thousand rubles on the construction alone - a huge fortune.
He formulated the main principles of theatrical activity: general accessibility, reasonable ticket prices, the repertoire is only interesting to the public. And then appeared on the way the namesake of the mother of Savva - Maria Fedorovna Andreeva. Yes, that same revolutionary, Lenin saw, was in a civil marriage with Gorky. The actress of the Moscow Art Theater and the most beautiful of all the actresses of the Russian scene. The romance was stormy.
Bolshevichka
Andreeva raised money for the Bolsheviks. Subsequently, the secret police will calculate that she managed to transfer several million rubles to the RSDLP. This is not even a state, but the budget of a small country. Lenin called Maria Fedorovna a comrade a phenomenon. The largest capitalist of Russia - Savva Morozov, whose biography is entirely connected with the oppression of the people, contained a party of communists, capital antagonists.
It was with his money that the Iskra was published, as well as the newspapers The Struggle and the New Life ā both Bolsheviks as well. He personally carried the Iskra circulation across the border, in addition to typographic fonts, he hid valuable comrades illegally arriving from abroad at home, and even distributed prohibited literature in his own factory, which he was once caught with. The Governor-General, Grand Duke Sergey, the uncle of the tsar talked with Savva Morozov about this. And all is not good.
Philosophy
Morozov Savva Timofeevich, whose brief biography speaks of close ties with illegal immigrants, was not a revolutionary. The Old Believers' way of life in it was killed by a European entity. Slavophilism and even populism seemed somewhat primitive. And then this magnificent Mashenka with communist theories and a clever thick book called Capital. Even Maxim Gorky, who became his closest friend, the smartest, most talented.
The case with Savva Morozov ended badly. Upon learning of the passion that arose between his best friend: a poor writer and his beloved woman, a slightly less poor actress, the manufacturer was simply killed. But he took care of Maria Fedorovna, who had already moved to Alexei Maximovich, and gave money to her, and Gorky, and to the Social Democrats. Andreeva bequeathed a bearer insurance policy of one hundred thousand rubles. He handed it over and left for Cannes to shoot himself there. This whole story took place according to the laws of our Russian literature, which is why the biography of Savva Timofeevich Morozov ended.