Alphabet of SZD from A to Z: Chizhov Fedor Vasilyevich. The meaning of Fedor Vasilyevich Chizhov in a brief biographical encyclopedia In the center of business Russia

Today, when disputes about Russia and Russians are being carried out with such bitterness, an appeal to the life and ideas of F.V. Chizhov, a physicist and art critic, entrepreneur, financier and philanthropist, is inevitable. The first evidence of his life is the speech of I.S. Aksakov, delivered by him in the Slavic charitable society a month after the death of F.V. Chizhov <1> , and a biographical essay written by his former personal secretary A. Cherokov <2> , - convey a vivid impression, but do not claim to be exhaustive. The biography written by A.A. Lieberman was obviously incomplete. <3> , because until 1917 the archive of F.V. Chizhov was closed.
The matter got off the ground relatively recently, when the scientist, journalist I.A. Simonova defended her dissertation on the views and activities of F.V. Chizhov <4> , and began work on a book about him for the Nauka publishing house. However, today it is especially important that the name of F.V. Chizhov should not be forgotten in his homeland - in Kostroma, where everything began more than 180 years ago.
One of the biographers of F.V. Chizhov cites his testimony that he “heartily loves Kostroma, because it was the beginning of both education and his moral development” <5> . Many noted that his father had a significant influence on him during this period.
Biographers believed that Fedor Vasilyevich Chizhov came from "a poor noble family" <6> . I.S. Aksakov wrote: “Born in 1811, in an insufficient noble family of the Kostroma province, he went through a hard school of labor and poverty” <7> , and Lieberman even clarifies: “his parents were noblemen of the Kostroma province, Chukhloma district and owned a small estate” <8> .
However, I.A. Simonova claims: “Unlike the vast majority of Slavophiles, Chizhav did not belong to the noble nobility - he was 12 years old when his father, a teacher at the Kostroma gymnasium, a native of the clergy, received the right to hereditary nobility” <9> . This right was given to him by many years of service in the institutions of the department of public education. He was one of the first teachers of the Kostroma gymnasium, which was formed in 1804 on the basis of the Kostroma Main People's School and was located in a two-story stone building, acquired at one time for this school by Order of the Public Charity on Verkhnedebrinskaya Street <10> (now it is Dzerzhinsky street, 9). In the files of the first year of the existence of the new educational institution, a document was kept entitled “Assignment of subjects and annual salaries to teachers of the Kostroma Provincial Gymnasium”, where among the seven teachers “the teacher of History with the inclusion of Mythology and antiquities, Geography, statistics and the beginnings of philosophy Vasily Chizhev” was determined a salary of 650 rubles <11> . “From the salary schedule for the teachers of the gymnasium, we can conclude that their financial situation was quite satisfactory” <12> .
The gymnasium at that time provided a versatile education: the same list included teachers of “pure and applied mathematics and commercial sciences”, “natural history, physics and the principles of political economy”, drawing, Latin and “fine sciences”, as well as German and French languages <13> . True, today it is rather difficult to determine the level of teaching of these disciplines.
According to some data, it can be assumed that, compared with the main public school, the complexity of subjects and the exactingness of teachers have increased significantly: the number of students has greatly, almost halved. So, apparently, enough attention was paid to each of the students. This educational institution was headed for seven years by N.F. Grammatin, one of the most educated people of his time, a poet, translator, and the first researcher of The Tale of Igor's Campaign. <14> .
This is what the Kostroma gymnasium was like when V. Chizhov taught there.
However, in 1819, the gymnasium charter underwent significant changes: “practical” disciplines disappeared from the schedule - technology, commerce, political, economics, law, psychology, but the Greek language and the Law of God were introduced. <15> . V. Chizhov, as a member of the pedagogical council of the gymnasium, takes part in the implementation of the new course <16> , however, already in the lists of teachers of 1820-23, his name does not appear <17> . Obviously, it was at this time that the Chizhov family moved to St. Petersburg.
F.V. Chizhov was 8 years old in 1819, so it is even difficult to say whether he had time to start teaching in Kostroma. He graduated from the gymnasium already in St. Petersburg, where he entered the university in the Faculty of Mathematics, which he graduated brilliantly in 1832. <18> .

The 1830s in the life of F.V. Chizhov pass under the star of the exact sciences: he “was engaged in mathematical sciences with great love and remarkable success” <19> , thanks to which he was left at the university, and in 1833 he already began teaching. A. Cherokov, who later became his personal secretary, spoke about the first appearance at the department of a new adjunct: “Always existing on meager means, more than earnings from lessons, he was not able to save anything for himself by the end of the course in order to equip himself with his own means, and at the very first lecture assigned to him, in order to avoid reproach for inaccuracy from the very first step, he was forced to appear in a student uniform. The prestige of the professorial title was threatened with embarrassment, and the professors immediately gathered among themselves the necessary funds for his uniform before the advance payment was requested. <20> .
He reads algebra, trigonometry, analytic and descriptive geometry, shadow theory and perspective <21> , and in 1836 he received a master's degree in philosophy for his thesis "On the general theory of equilibrium with an application to the equilibrium of liquid bodies and the definition of the figure of the earth" <22> . At this time, the railway, which connects St. Petersburg with Tsarskoye Selo, is already entering Russian life. It was solemnly opened in 1837 (remember, according to M.I. Glinka - “All the people are having fun and rejoicing. A train is racing in an open field ...”). F.V. Chizhov was the man who published a work on steam engines for the first time in Russia, in the very next year, 1838. It was called "Steam engines - their history, description and application with many drawings" and was based on the works of English specialists - Pertington, Stephens and others. <23> .

In his native Kostroma, the railway will run only in half a century, perhaps, and so far even the rumor about it has not yet reached the provincial wilderness (later we will meet the story of the wanderer Feklusha about the railway in Ostrovsky's "Thunderstorm" as a fire-breathing iron beast). Time passes faster in the capitals.

The railway will remain for F.V. Chizhov a symbol of Russia's progress and prosperity for the rest of his life. And it will eventually reach Kostroma thanks to his efforts. But it will be later, but for now his brilliant career is suddenly interrupted, and life takes a different direction. He seemed to his friends a pragmatist, “I don’t know if he is capable of enthusiasm,” A. Nikitenko wrote about him at that time in his diary <24> . Everyone noted his clear mind, logic. However, science disappoints him, and the motives for this disappointment reveal another side of his nature: new interests appear in the field of humanitarian knowledge, while F. V. Chizhov himself “looked at science too lyrically, saw in it a lofty, almost sacred cause, and therefore demanded full and unconditional dedication from a person who undertook to be a teacher” <25> .

F.V. Chizhov said these words about N.V. Gogol, who simultaneously taught at the university and divided himself between science and literature, but this also applies to him to no lesser extent. And therefore, when the circle of his interests includes the history of arts and literature, sociology (we would say today the history of culture), he leaves the department, to which he gave 8 years, and goes abroad in 1840. He is seized by the desire to learn the history of art - "one of the most direct ways to study the history of mankind" <26> , seizes with force no less than before - the desire to know the laws of the physical structure of the world. F.V. Chizhov goes to the waters in Marienbad, travels around Germany, but he certainly spends every winter in Rome, meeting again - and again "not getting along" - there with N.V. Gogol. And the main content of the Roman winters was the study of art history.
One of the modern researchers S.L. Chernov remarked in passing: F.V. Chizhov "becomes an amateur art critic, writes more or less talented correspondence in Russian journals, collects material for a great work on the history of art, which has remained unwritten" <27> . However, this does not take into account the state of Russian art history in the 1840s, which, unlike literary criticism, did not yet have high-level professional criticism and was in the process of becoming. Against this background, F.V. Chizhov, with his ability to "get to the very essence" in any business he undertakes, was a prominent figure, enjoyed influence among artists.
According to A. Cherokov, “engaged in Rome exclusively in the study of the arts, Chizhov soon became close to the entire circle of artists there, on whom, according to Krivtsov’s certificates (the inspector of Russian artists abroad), he had a very beneficial influence and soon became a real connoisseur for them, a true healer and a fair judge, thanks to his strict respect for the requirements of the arts” <28> . This "circle of artists" consisted mainly of the best graduates of the Academy of Arts sent abroad for internships, among them were mature masters, for example, A. Ivanov, who at that time was hatching the idea of ​​the painting "The Appearance of the Messiah".

On the same trip, F.V. Chizhov first visits the Slavic countries that were under Austro-Hungarian rule. In Prague, he met one of the ideologists of Slavic unity - V. Ganka, got acquainted with one of the ideologists of the Slavic peoples, and since then the ideas of God's chosen people, the special mission of the Slavic peoples, and above all Russian, permeate the entire existence of F.V. Chizhov. However, the implementation of these ideas was incredibly far from the perverted notions of Russian daydreaming prevailing today. This man loved Russia so much that he, it seems, decided to refute the myth of Russian laziness and lack of enterprise with his very life. Even in the years of teaching at the university, F.V. Chizhov was noticed "the ability to subordinate his personal considerations to the practical goals of life" <29> .
In 1847, when returning from another trip to the Slavic countries, where he was noticed by the Austrians in helping the Montenegrins, F.V. Chizhov was arrested at the border and held for two weeks in the Peter and Paul Fortress. After that, he was forbidden to stay in the capitals, and he chooses to live in the town of Trypillya, 50 miles from Kiev, where he is engaged in ... breeding silkworms to prove the possibility and profitability of this occupation in Russia. And, as in other cases, these works were crowned not only with pounds of silk he himself worked out, which required considerable labor, but also with a solid study of the “Notes on silkworm breeding”; this work covered sericulture from the 5th century to modern technology and economic prospects and was translated into foreign languages <30> .

As soon as the possibility of life in the capitals appeared, he settled in Moscow, as the closest to the Russian spirit. It happens among the Slavophiles - Aksakovs, Kireevskys, Khomyakov, but nevertheless retains independence in judgments, and most importantly, carries out his own path of exaltation of Russia. This path did not at all seem indisputable to the Slavophiles: it was a bet on the development of technical progress, assistance to domestic industry and commerce.

The people who collaborated with F.V. Chizhov starting from the 1850s, when he devoted himself entirely to the cause of promoting industry, were closely associated with the Kostroma land. Among them - A.P. Shipov, a representative of the Kostroma noble family, one of the founders of the first mechanical plant in our city in 1852 (in its place - the plant named after L.B. Krasin). Kostromichi V.A.Kokarev, A.I.Koshelev, one of the owners of the largest flax processing factory in the country of the partnership of the New Kostroma Linen Manufactory (colloquially - the "Kashino factory") - S.M.Tretyakov.

In addition to them, such large Russian industrialists as I.F. Mamontov, T.S. Morozov, K.T. Soldatenkov and others are surrounded by F.V. Chizhov. Together with A.P. Shipov, he created the "Society for the Promotion of Russian Industry and Trade", and then in 1858-1862 published the journal "Bulletin of Industry", initially at his own expense. Everything that could contribute to the independence of the Russian economy and its power was promoted on the pages of this printed organ. One of the first conditions for this was the abolition of serfdom, which greatly hindered the development of industry. Entrepreneurship was hindered by class isolation, the lack of economic and political rights for industrialists. F.V. Chizhov succeeded in arousing public opinion in getting the government to grant benefits to Russian capitalists. He advocated the creation of a network of railways with a main hub in Moscow, the development of metallurgy to mechanical engineering, the creation of joint-stock banks, a large number of technical educational institutions <31> .

All this, of course, was of much greater importance in that period than just the development of the economy: it influenced the formation of national self-consciousness, the political independence of the state. Suffice it to say that even today historians recognize the weak development of communications as one of the reasons for Russia's defeat in the Crimean War of 1853-1856. The publication of the magazine was a very troublesome business, it required large expenses, and there was not enough money. However, F.V. Chizhov, on another occasion, said about himself: “I somehow more willingly submit to the most difficult work, when the reason and purpose of it are clear to me” <32> . Soon, the benefits of the publication - the goal of this huge work by F.V. Chizhov - became obvious not only to him, but also to those for whom he published the Bulletin of Industry. Subscribers - Moscow entrepreneurs, who often delayed the payment of money, were suddenly notified of the imminent closure of the magazine.
Here is how the secretary of F.V. Chizhov A. Cherokov recalled this: “This circular (on termination, subscription. - L. S.) caused a whole stir among the subscribers: almost every day they came either singly or in groups to the editorial office for information - right? and what is needed to keep the magazine going. Arrears were all fully delivered in a few days" <33> . However, the publisher was firm, the magazine ceased to exist.

This did not mean that F.V. Chizhov abandoned his views or the hope of realizing them. He just embarked on the path of their independent implementation. Yes, and his ideas have already been accepted by a significant number of figures in Russian industry and trade.

In 1867, the Moscow Merchant Bank was opened (F.V. Chizhov was invited to manage its operations), then in 1869, on his initiative, the Merchant Society of Mutual Credit was created in Moscow. The ideas of Vestnik Promyshlennost took on flesh and blood, private initiative was freed up and became less dependent on the dictates of the bureaucracy. Once upon a time, at the dawn of his life, F.V. Chizhov for the first time realized the importance of railway communications, propagandized steam engines. A fifty-year-old financier, he returns to this idea. “He set himself the task of wresting Russian roads from the hands of foreigners,” writes A. Cherokov <34> . And in this, in addition to understanding their strategic importance, there was also a desire to prove "that Russian ignoramuses will be able to build the same roads with Russian money and manage them" <35> .

This was not the result of unreasonable ambition. Before building the road to Sergiev Posad, on the initiative of F.V. Chizhov, a survey was carried out that clarified the flow of potential passengers, and an economic justification was drawn up. The first line, built on Russian capital by Russian specialists, was later extended to Yaroslavl, and then to Vologda. About why at that time the road was not brought to Kostroma, A.A. Lieberman suggested the following: “It is very likely that Chizhov’s heart prompted him to connect the railroad with Moscow and his native Kostroma, but his puritanical strictness towards the public domain did not allow him to do this: he was aware of the disadvantage for the Society of the branch to Kostroma; this branch was laid after his death" <36> .

So, when traveling to Kostroma from Moscow, it would be nice to remember that nothing arises by itself and there must be a person who conceived the existence and executed it, and most often there were many such people. And I would like to believe that such people will still appear in our Fatherland! A complex financial transaction was developed by F.V. Chizhov in order to buy the Moscow-Kursk railway from foreign capitalists. Only 18 years later, having invested virtually all cash capital in bank shares, F.V. Chizhov and his companions were to receive income. For F.V. Chizhov, this meant that he would not see these incomes during his lifetime. It was these capitals that he bequeathed to the creation of a network of educational and medical institutions in his homeland, in the Kostroma province <37> .
Lower chemical-technical school in. Kostroma was opened in 1894, on September 26 <38> . At that moment it was the first lower school with a chemical specialty in Russia. It gave students "the theoretical and practical knowledge necessary for craftsmen in chemical plants and in dyeing establishments. <39> . The second Kostroma school - secondary mechanical and technical, was opened three years later, on September 2, 1897, and trained "technicians who could be the closest assistants to engineers and other top managers of factory enterprises of mechanical and electrical specialties" <40> .

The tuition for education was different and corresponded to the level of education, and hence the subsequent payment, for graduates in the primary - 3, on average - 30 rubles a year. But it must be remembered that the poor pupils were exempted from payment, received benefits from special funds. So, only in the lower Kostroma school, scholarships were paid for 1000 rubles a year - a huge amount for those times. For two Kostroma schools, the buildings of the Shipov brothers' factory mentioned above were bought - the first mechanical plant in the city, where workshops were perfectly equipped with equipment. Suffice it to say that electricity in the newly built buildings and workshops of schools already existed at the end of the last century (the city power plant was opened only in 1913), its own foundry was operating, etc. <41> .

Chemical-Technological School. F.V. Chizhov in Kostroma

In the development of the idea of ​​F.V. Chizhov about the need for the progress of the Russian "backwoods", schools were opened in the county towns of the Kostroma province - Kologriv, Makariev and Chukhloma. There, in addition to teaching the crafts necessary in agriculture, they trained cheese makers, tanners, flax processing specialists, etc. Sometimes, as in Kologriv and Chukhloma, the complexes of school buildings formed entire training campuses, equipped with everything necessary.

The memory of F.V. Chizhov was carefully preserved among the students and teachers of the school, the Society of his former graduates was created, who followed the fate of those who graduated from the school, if necessary, provided support. Women's special education was not forgotten either. In 1902, the county zemstvo hospital, which was located near factories and served residents of the western industrial region of the city. The institution provided assistance to parents and prepared grandmothers, that is, midwives of the highest qualification <42> . It also provided health education for workers. They say that the graduates were given a bag with a set of necessary tools and a sufficient amount of medicines for the first time.

So F.V. Chizhov returned to his native city after his death. It happened on November 26, 1877 in Moscow. God sent him an easy end - he died in the arms of friends and students from an aortic aneurysm. A fate full of paradoxes that refutes all stereotypical ideas about the Russian character. I.S. Aksakov, remembering him, said: “He himself would have been surprised if, at the time when he was studying art history in Italy, so passionately beloved by him, someone had announced to him his later activities as a railway builder or founder of banks” <43> . All his life he was guided by concern for Russia. Let us hope that such people will again appear in our country at this critical moment.

At the end of 1866, with the active participation of Chizhov, the Moscow Merchant Bank was opened. It became the largest joint-stock bank in Moscow and the second largest in Russia, remaining so until the beginning of the 20th century.

To the 195th anniversary of Fyodor Vasilyevich Chizhov

"How great wealth you are endowed with from God, so much and even more than that you have to give."

"Advice to the Rich" from the Izbornik of 1076

"I am exactly the same ascetic of labor, as the medieval monks were, only they devoted themselves to prayers, and I work..."

F.V. Chizhov

The name of Fyodor Vasilyevich Chizhov thundered during his lifetime, but in our century it has been unfairly forgotten. Chizhov is remembered mainly only in connection with the names of Alexander Ivanov, Gogol, Yazykov, Polenov, Savva Mamontov, in whose destinies he played a beneficial, and sometimes saving role. At the same time, Chizhov was an outstanding personality in the history of Russia in the 19th century - a talented publicist, mathematician, art historian, major industrialist, financier, philanthropist. Being a Slavophile by conviction, he was directly involved in the development of the Slavophile ideal of the future structure of the Russian state and defended it in disputes with Westerners in Moscow living rooms and literary and philosophical salons, on the pages of books and periodicals, tried to influence the adoption of state decisions in notes addressed to the Tsar.

Chizhov considered Slavophilism as a system of views designed to practically solve the problems facing Russia. With all the diversity and versatility of Chizhov's knowledge and occupations, his activities were dominated by the economic orientation of interests: throughout his life he was absorbed in the prospects for applying the achievements of scientific and technical thought to the needs of Russia. It was precisely such people as Chizhov that Ivan Aksakov had in mind when he said: "Our convictions (that is, the Slavophiles) are the lot of not only abstract people, dreamers and poets, but also people who are recognized as practical."

ORIGINS

Fyodor Vasilyevich Chizhov was born in Kostroma on February 27 (March 11 according to the new style), 1811. When he was 12 years old, his father Vasily Vasilyevich Chizhov, a native of the clergy, was promoted to collegiate assessors for many years of service as a teacher at the Kostroma gymnasium and received the right to hereditary nobility.

Chizhov's mother, Uliana Dmitrievna, nee Ivanova, was known as a very educated woman. The daughter of an impoverished nobleman, she was brought up in the house of her distant relatives, the Counts Tolstoy - Major General Ivan Andreevich, great-grandson of the glorious associate of Peter the Great, and Anna Fedorovna, nee Maykova. Their eldest son Fedor Ivanovich Tolstoy went down in history under the nickname "American" - the fact is that, being a member of the round-the-world expedition of I.F. Kruzenshtern, he was landed for a number of extravagant deeds in the Aleutian Islands and lived there for quite a long time among the natives. The colorful figure of Tolstoy the American, a participant in the Patriotic War of 1812, "matchmaker" A.S. Pushkin, an adventurer, a breter and a card player, served as a prototype for the heroes of the works of A.S. Griboedov and L.N. Tolstoy. Fedor Ivanovich was Chizhov's godfather (by the way, Chizhov was named Fedor in his honor). Undoubtedly, the stories about the most incredible adventures of Tolstoy the American, heard in childhood, could not but be remembered by the godson, and such traits of Fyodor Ivanovich's character as the breadth of nature, craving for travel, enterprise, vitality and optimism, invariably delighted the boy and served as an example for him.

The way in the family was patriarchal, the children were brought up in strictness and respect for their parents, on the examples of Christian virtues. In addition to the eldest, Fedya, three more daughters grew up: Alexandra, Elena and Olga. They lived next to the Epiphany Monastery in a one-story wooden house with a mezzanine. In 1823, Vasily Vasilyevich Chizhov, through his former student N.P. Chichagov, an employee of M.M. Speransky, secured a place for himself in St. Petersburg. The father took his son with him. Education, begun in Kostroma, the twelve-year-old Fedya continued on a state budget at the Third St. Petersburg Gymnasium. Soon, Alexander's sister also moved to the capital: she was admitted to the Smolny Institute for Noble Maidens at the expense of Empress Maria Feodorovna - this was probably facilitated by V. A. Zhukovsky, who knew Vasily Vasilyevich very closely.

Chizhov's mathematical abilities showed up early, and admission to St. Petersburg University at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics was predetermined.

YEARS OF SEARCH

Since 1829, a significant role in the ideological development of Chizhov began to play "Holy Friday" - a small literary and philosophical circle of students and graduates of St. Petersburg University, who gathered on Fridays at the apartment of the future famous literary historian, critic and censor Alexander Vasilyevich Nikitenko.

The meetings of "Holy Friday" were in the nature of literary and philosophical conversations, the purpose of which was the development of creative, paradoxical, independent thinking. Revolutionary events in France, Belgium, in a number of German and Italian principalities, uprisings in Poland and Lithuania, pacification of the revolt of military settlers, the oppression of censorship, the prohibition of I.V. Criticism of negative social phenomena was carried out from pro-Western positions, in particular, the political system in France with its chamber of deputies was idealized.

The soul of the circle was the philologist Vladimir Sergeevich Pecherin, a poet, republican and Mazzinist. Not without the influence of Pecherin, Chizhov turned to the study of the works of Christian and utopian socialism. In his diary entries, tyrannical motifs begin to appear. At the same time, unlike Pecherin, who fled to the West in search of a revolutionary ideal that was not completely clear to him, Chizhov turned out to be more prudent and sensible. Considering science as the only refuge from the "despotism of autocracy", he tried to find in academic studies the main goal and meaning of his life. In 1832 he brilliantly graduated from the university with a PhD in physics and mathematics.

Since the end of the 20s of the XIX century, the best graduates of Russian universities were sent for internships abroad. Chizhov was supposed to be among them. But the revolutionary events in Europe forced the Russian government to ban foreign business trips from May 1832 for fear of a possible pernicious influence on compatriots of the revolutionary Western ideas. In one of his private conversations, Emperor Nicholas I said on this occasion: "I confess that I do not like sending abroad. Young people return from there with a spirit of criticism that makes them find, perhaps rightly, the institutions of their country unsatisfactory."

Chizhov was left at St. Petersburg University, where he began to read as an adjunct professor in a number of mathematical disciplines and to prepare under the guidance of Academician M.V. Ostrogradsky - an outstanding Russian mathematician, founder of the St. Petersburg school of mathematics, theoretical and practical physics and mechanics - a dissertation for a master's degree.

The son of poor parents, Chizhov was extremely low on funds and was forced to earn his living by private lessons and tutoring. Many pages of his diary of those years are dotted with monetary calculations: in order to make ends meet, he kept all his expenses to a minimum. However, after the death of his father in 1832, he abandoned the small family estate Ozerovo near the village of Ivanova, Shuisky district, Vladimir province, in favor of the sisters.

Chizhov showed up for his first lecture in an old student uniform, having no money to buy a uniform. "The prestige of the professorship was threatened with embarrassment," one of Chizhov's first biographers wrote about this "incident," and the professors immediately gathered among themselves the necessary funds for his uniform before the advance payment was requested.

In August 1833, university professor D.S. Chizhov, the namesake of Fyodor Vasilyevich, obtained from the trustee of the educational district S.S. Uvarov an annual allowance of 150 rubles for three years, so that the young scientist could do science without being distracted by worries about earning money.

In 1836, Chizhov successfully defended his dissertation and received the title of Master of Philosophy in the Department of Physical and Mathematical Sciences. He continued lecturing at St. Petersburg University and became the author of a number of published works. His position was stronger than ever, life was well-established, the future seemed certain and not subject to any blows of fate. “... In my opinion, nowhere will I be put in my place like here,” Chizhov assured one of his correspondents, “while making love in my office, I go to the university as if for relaxation, to talk friendly with students about what I do, and pass on to them the fruits of my labors. Find, if you can, a position that would be better than mine.”

But already by 1840, the isolation of the field chosen by Chizhov as a mathematician ceased to satisfy the desire for social significance that had awakened in him. His interests begin to go in the other direction - to studies in literature, history, philosophy, politics. "The cause of the writer is closest to me," he decides. "I feel ... a secret desire to play a role, to matter." He tries to write poetry, works on stories, a psychological novel, places reviews, popular science reviews, translations of articles and books from the field of mathematics, mechanics, literature, aesthetics, morality in various metropolitan magazines and newspapers, draws closer to the literary and artistic world of St. Petersburg (M. I. Glinka, N. V. Kukolnik, F. M. Tolstoy). Gradually, his main hobby becomes the history of fine art, in the study of which he sees one of the most direct ways to study the history of mankind.

In the autumn of 1840, Chizhov left teaching (he officially resigned from the Ministry of Public Education in 1845) and went abroad in the summer of 1841 in order to collect materials for art history research.

"YOU, BROTHER, RUS"

Traveling around the countries of Western Europe, Chizhov lived for a long time in Italy, where he got acquainted with the works of painting, sculpture, and architectural monuments. In Rome, he briefly became friends with Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, whom he knew back in St. Petersburg University, joined the colony of Russian artists who worked in Italy at that time (among them were the painter I.K. Aivazovsky, the sculptor N.S. Pimenov, the architects K.A. Ton, N.L. Benois), continued his art studies and even tried to draw himself. Chizhov was one of the initiators of the weekly meetings of Russian artists in Rome, the so-called "Saturdays", which were arranged to read and discuss the best works of European, and above all Russian literature, as well as their own literary experiences.

Chizhov became especially close friends with Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov. Visiting his studio for the first time, Chizhov presciently predicted: "He will be one of the first in our history of art." Ivanov, for his part, was influenced by Chizhov's personal charm and deep knowledge of art history. In one of his letters to the artist F.A. Moller in Florence, he wrote: "Do you still have Chizhov? Please tell him to hurry to Rome ... he has become the last necessity for me ... Please, Chizhov ... rather to Rome."

Having witnessed the financial difficulties that the modest Ivanov, naive to the point of childishness in everyday matters, faced while working on the painting "The Appearance of Christ to the People", Chizhov took all measures to find means for the successful completion of the artist's many years of work. He took advantage of his long-standing acquaintance with Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky, at that time the tutor of the Heir to the Throne, Grand Duke Alexander Nikolayevich, and turned to him with a request to intercede with the Tsarevich for financial assistance to Ivanov. Through Chizhov, the artist received money from other people.

Chizhov outlined his impressions of visiting the workshops of Russian artists in Rome in a lengthy article published in the Moscow Literary and Scientific Collection for 1846.

In parallel, for a number of years, Chizhov worked in the libraries of Venice and the Vatican on a four-volume history of the Venetian Republic, which he was going to acquaint his compatriots with. The republican form of government, carried out in Venice for fourteen centuries, seemed to him "the germ of a new history, a link connecting medieval humanity with pre-revolutionary humanity."

A meeting in Prague in the summer of 1841 with the famous poet and philologist, a prominent figure in the Czech national Renaissance, Vaclav Ganka, became an impetus for the development of Chizhov's interest in foreign Slavs. Collecting materials for the planned work on the history of the Republic of Venice, Chizhov made a walking trip from Venice in the summer of 1843 to its former possessions: Istria, Dalmatia and Montenegro, which were now part of the Austrian Empire. Conversations with the local Slavic population forced him to finally decide on the issue of Slavism. “In the course of this whole journey,” Chizhov recalled, “I saw the most ardent sympathy for me as a Russian. At every step I met signs of love and deep respect for the name of the Russian ... The people love the Russians for their faith and because we have a lot in common in the simplicity of morals. Montenegro was the last place that completely tied me to the Slavs and made me involuntarily focus all my concepts on this issue, which had never occurred to me before. Everyone I met from the people , with the first word they greeted me: "You, brother, are Russian."

Studying the spiritual life of foreign Slavs, discovering on specific examples the kinship of common Slavic cultural traditions. Chizhov became interested in the political life of the Slavic peoples and their participation in the national liberation movement. “I gave myself up with all my heart to the Slavic question: in Slavism I saw the dawn of the coming period of history, in it I looked forward to the rebirth of mankind,” he later wrote. The idea of ​​uniting all Slavic peoples into a single state became his "reserved belief". His ideas about the political future of the Slavs then included dreams of a constitution, of a republic, and he, "giving himself full rein, for some time became more a Slav without a family, without a tribe, than a Russian."

Chizhov was not inclined to theorize about the organizational forms of the future existence of a single union of Slavic peoples. His activities in the lands of the southern and western Slavs most often had the character of practical assistance to the Slavic national liberation movement. In particular, he paid much attention to the position of the Orthodox Church in the Habsburg Empire, because the Austrian government sought to denationalize the Slavs by converting them to Catholicism. For many oppressed Slavic peoples, Orthodoxy was associated with their ethnicity, and the Orthodox clergy played an important role in the cause of national resistance.

Struck by the extreme poverty of one of the Orthodox churches in the village of Poroy near the city of Pola in Istria, where the utensils and books necessary for church services were almost completely absent, Chizhov, with the help of Platon Vasilyevich Golubkov, a Kostroma resident, a millionaire and gold miner, delivered almost three thousand rubles worth of icons, vestments and service books from Russia to the borders of Austria. He personally transported everything sent across the Adriatic Sea and almost fell into the hands of Austrian soldiers. Warned about the arrival of Chizhov and armed Dalmatians who came out to meet him protected him.

The story of the illegal delivery of church utensils to Poroy served as an occasion for one of the first in a series of denunciations against Chizhov by the Austrian government and agents of the Third Section. This could not but arouse the alertness of official St. Petersburg, in which the Slavic sympathies of the Decembrists were well remembered. In addition, the Russian government, having achieved in the late 30s of the 19th century the predominant influence in Constantinople and the Russian-Turkish alliance extremely beneficial for itself, was interested in maintaining the status quo in the Balkans. In addition to Turkey, flirting with the "Slavic idea" led to complications with the allied Austrian Empire, which was not at all inclined to satisfy the national-political demands of the Slavic peoples subject to it.

Actually, Chizhov first learned about Slavophilism as a new direction of social thought in Russia in late 1842 - early 1943 in Rome. It was then that he met Nikolai Mikhailovich Yazykov, who was closely associated with the Slavophile circle in Moscow (his sister, Ekaterina Mikhailovna, was married to the head of the Slavophiles, Alexei Stepanovich Khomyakov). Having met with the poet in a completely brotherly way, seeing and talking with him almost daily, Chizhov became interested in his stories about new phenomena in the ideological life of Russia, about the confrontation between two camps - Slavophiles and Westerners, who differently understand the historical role and vocation of Russia, differently answer the question of the ways of its further development.

A meeting in Montenegro with Vasily Yelagin, the half-brother of Ivan and Peter Kireevsky, who traveled through the Slavic lands, and then a rapprochement in Rome with Yelagin's friend Alexander Popov and the latter's friend, Slavophile of the Little Russian persuasion Nikolai Rigelman, grandson of the famous Ukrainian historian, author of "The Chronicle of Little Russia" Alexander Rigelman, expanded Chizhov's circle of acquaintances among the people of Slavophy lsk circle.

PARIS

In May 1844, Chizhov went to Paris, the main laboratory of socio-political theories of that time, in order to make sure of the truth of the Slavophil views close to him. In Paris, he made attempts to get acquainted with "representatives of Polish parties and opinions ... with the French of various sects: Fourierists, Saint-Simonists, Communists and Mutualists."

The theories of utopian socialism did not satisfy Chizhov, primarily because, in his opinion, they focused all their interest on only one material side of human life.

As a neophyte Slavophil, Chizhov showed interest in the ideas of Adam Mickiewicz. At the College de France, he listened to his lectures on the history of Slavic literature, and then their personal acquaintance took place. In Mickiewicz, Chizhov saw his brother, a Slav, burning with the same "fire of Slavic love."

Paris itself, with its striking social contrasts, made an unfavorable impression on Chizhov, convincing him of the justice of judgments that only the simple and as yet unspoiled nature of the Slavs, and above all the Russian people, was destined to return Western European civilization to the harmony of the internal and external aspects of its existence.

IDEA OF ALL-SLAVY

In 1845, Chizhov again went to the Yugoslavs, this time with a specific goal: to delve more deeply into the course of the national liberation movement and understand how close his ideals are to implementation here. The travel route passed through Bosnia, Croatia, Slavonia, Serbia and Hungary. Chizhov met with many political and public figures of the Slavic Renaissance: the leader of Illyrianism, Ljudevit Gay, the Croatian poet Stanko Vraz, the Serbian statesman Jovann Hadzic, the Slovak poet and scholar Jan Kollar, and the Slovak publicist Ljudevit Stur. However, the preaching of the idea of ​​a special mission of the Slavs in the renewal of the decrepit West, of the role of the Orthodox Church as the cornerstone of the future unity of the Slavic tribes, did not find support among everyone - the Slavic world was too heterogeneous and full of contradictions.

At the request of like-minded people, Chizhov kept a detailed diary about his journey. In the future, he was going to use his travel notes as the basis for a book about the past and present, the life and customs of the southern and western Slavs. Chizhov wanted to communicate his impressions to Russia as soon as possible, but for fear of being perused, he did not trust letters. “I would like to talk about many things with you,” he wrote to Yazykov, “with Khomyakov, with Kireevsky, whom, like you, according to your stories, I consider myself close. I thought to convey the details to you ... but you know? It’s unpleasant when all family gifts are made known to the post office ... and under the pretext of examining whether there are things that can endure the plague, all letters are opened.”

Chizhov decided to return to Russia as soon as possible, where he was to make a personal acquaintance with the "Muscovites" - members of the Slavophil circle - and take direct part in heated public disputes on their side.

MOSCOW MEETINGS

... "Moscow received me excellently," Chizhov reported to Alexander Ivanov in Rome. He found that the whole of Russian society was divided into "admirers of their fatherland" and "Western worshipers", and divided sharply. The time has come for Russia to show in practice what has hitherto "appeared in hopes": it can be independent in everything, in all fields, in all types of activity.

Chizhov becomes a regular in the Slavophile living rooms of the Sverbeevs and Elagins, visits the homes of the Khomyakovs, Aksakovs, and Smirnovs, where he introduces the audience to the art history articles he wrote in Rome. And from everywhere he hears loud praise in his address. The high appraisal of Alexandra Osipovna Smirnova-Rosset, the closest friend of Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Gogol, was especially flattering. And Avdotya Petrovna Elagina, noting the ardent pathos of Chizhov's literary works, will say: "Few people write so sincerely."

However, his stay in Moscow, acquaintance on the spot with the balance of power in the ranks of the Slavophiles and Westernizers led Chizhov to a disappointing conclusion about the relative inertia of the Slavophiles and, as a result, the lesser popularity of their ideas in society. Chizhov repeatedly criticized his Moscow friends for their too lazy, contemplative love for Russia. "So much data for activity - and no significant activity," he resented. Westerners are "stronger not by their own strengths - by means. Europe gives them a way to seduce the Russian people. They stuff sheets in several magazines with everything that comes across in Europe, and mental stomachs are fed with this somehow cooked porridge. Ours are lazy, but it is difficult to scold them. ov".

In the summer of 1846, mainly with Yazykov's money, the Slavophiles bought the magazine "Russian Messenger" from the St. Petersburg publisher S.N. Glinka. At the same time, Chizhov was entrusted with editing it.

Chizhov was going to oppose the Moscow "Russkiy Vestnik" to the St. Petersburg magazines, in which he saw "everything too un-Russian, from language to concepts." “Petersburg journalists are not familiar with beliefs,” Chizhov wrote to Ivanov. “They are cosmopolitans in everything: in life, in beliefs, in virtues and vices, that is, people who collect everything.

In the Slavophile "Russian Messenger" Chizhov wanted to present the Russian people "not in words, but in essence." He planned to make regular reviews of the literature of the Slavic peoples, publish critical analyzes of all significant European literary novelties and works published abroad about Russia, and print excerpts from his diaries about travels in the Slavic lands.

In letters to Yazykov, Chizhov enthusiastically reported: "Now the journal has become for me the only opportunity for a moral existence." The field of the writer, so once attracted him, became a reality.

In the autumn of 1846, the newly-made editor went abroad for the second time - to the lands of the southern Slavs, in order to recruit correspondents for the Russkiy vestnik. However, when returning to Russia in May 1847, he was arrested at the border. In St. Petersburg, these messages were perceived in the light of the secret “Slavic Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius” that was revealed the day before, which aimed to create a confederal union of all Slavs on democratic principles, similar to the North American States. Chizhov's involvement in the activities of the society was not in doubt.

After two weeks of interrogations in the Third Division, Chizhov was deported to Ukraine under secret surveillance, without the right to reside in both capitals. At the same time, he was granted the Highest permission, “having removed all the ideas and dreams of the Slavophiles, to continue literary studies, but so that instead of ordinary censorship he would submit his works to the preliminary consideration of the chief of gendarmes.”

Once in Ukraine, Chizhov could not come to his senses for a long time: "... My situation is terribly sad," he wrote in his diary.

In search of a business that could captivate, and in addition, become a source of income for him, deprived of a livelihood, Chizhov's attention was attracted by large plantings of mulberry trees in the Kiev province. Back in 1843-1844, while living in Italy and France, he traveled specifically to areas of developed sericulture, inspected plantations, and was interested in the progress of work on breeding silkworms. At the same time, he had the idea of ​​developing sericulture among the peasants of central Russia and Ukraine as an aid to their field economy. In May 1850, Chizhov leased from the Ministry of State Property 60 acres of mulberry plantations (4,000 old, neglected trees) on the Trypillia farm, 50 versts from Kyiv. For many decades they did not bring any income to the treasury and therefore were given to Chizhov for free 24-year maintenance.

Before embarking on direct activities on leased lands, Chizhov, accustomed to doing everything thoroughly, visited the best plantations in the south of Russia, where he got acquainted with the organization of farms of prominent Russian silkworm breeders: A.F. Rebrov and N.A. Raiko. Wishing to put into practice the information he received, he worked for some time on the Rebrov plantations near Odessa as a student and an ordinary worker.

Returning to Tripoli, Chizhov began to establish a silk farm on the lands allotted to him, and soon, with the permission of the government, went to Moscow to sell the first pood of silk he had produced with his own hands.

In order to spread sericulture as quickly as possible in the nearby villages, Chizhov distributed mulberry trees and silkworm larvae to local peasants, and after two or three years, several hundred peasant families near Chizhov's plantations began to engage in a new trade for themselves and receive relatively high incomes.

In addition, Chizhov organized at his plantations a practical school for boys - students of parochial schools in various provinces of Ukraine. Poor landowners, having heard about the successful conduct of business with a neighbor on mulberry plantations, began to start sericulture farms on their estates, while turning to Chizhov for advice and help.

Intending to make his own economic experience public, Chizhov wrote and in 1853 published in St. Petersburg Letters on Sericulture, and seventeen years later he republished them in Moscow with extensive additions. In this book, which was awarded a medal by the Moscow Society of Agriculture, Fyodor Vasilievich introduced readers to sericulture and its history and, using the example of his own activities, proved the profitability of the occupation he promoted.

Chizhov's sphere of interest at that time was not limited to sericulture alone. Using friendly relations with many senior officials of the Kyiv province, he tried to improve the transport, economic and industrial situation in certain areas of Ukraine. Throughout his life, having been disgusted by official service, he now even thought about taking the place of the manager of the Kyiv Chamber of State Property, hoping to be able to do "something good" in this field. The appointment did not take place, most likely because Chizhov considered his stay in the Kyiv province as forced, and therefore temporary. With all his might he yearned for Moscow. He was convinced that Moscow was "the heart of Russia" while Kyiv was "the Russian sanctuary."

The Crimean War gave impetus to the growth of opposition sentiments in the country. The death of Emperor Nicholas I aroused hopes for the liberalization of the Russian social system. These hopes, however, with a certain degree of skepticism, were also shared by Chizhov.

At the end of 1855, after long delays, the Slavophiles were allowed to publish the journal Russkaya Beseda. In it, Chizhov placed his "Notes of a traveler in the Slavic countries", as well as the article "Giovanni Angelico of Fiesoli and the relation of his works to our icon painting." Together with Chizhov's art history articles published in 1840-1850, these works became part of the general set of materials that made up the aesthetics of Slavophilism, and contributed to the study of Italian Pre-Renaissance painting, traditional Orthodox iconography, to understanding the essence, tasks and ways of development of Russian fine art and architecture of the 19th century.

For merits in the field of art criticism, Chizhov was awarded in 1857 the honorary title of free member of the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts. A year later, the "Society of Lovers of Russian Literature" elected him as its full member. And from February 1860, he became a member of the Society for Assistance to Needy Writers and Scientists organized by A.V. Druzhinin, I.S. Turgenev, N.A. Nekrasov, L.N. Tolstoy - the Literary Fund.

Having received permission to live in the capitals, Chizhov began to put things in order in his silk farm, which had to be left to a specially hired manager, and only from the middle of 1857 was he able to finally move to Moscow.

IN THE CENTER OF BUSINESS RUSSIA

"Alexander Spring" opened a new period in Chizhov's life, almost entirely devoted to the commercial and industrial development of Russia. At the same time, his faith in the special structure of the Russian soul, which is expressed in the masterpieces of fine art, and dreams of pan-Slavism were transformed into an awareness of the need for "rough, daily work" for the glory of Russian economic prosperity.

Already in the journal Russkaya Beseda, and then in the newspaper Molva, the main provisions of the Slavophile socio-economic program were formulated, which boiled down to the need for patronage of domestic industry through protectionist customs duties, the construction of a railway network, and the expansion of technical education. After the removal in 1858 of the ban on the discussion of the peasant question in the press, the Slavophiles began to publish a special supplement to the "Russian conversation" - the magazine "Rural improvement". It outlined views on the conditions for the abolition of serfdom. Gradually, representatives of those social strata began to group around the Slavophiles, whose interests coincided with the program they put forward for the necessary transformations in the country, namely, industrialists and merchants interested in the broad development of Russian national industry, in a sharp decrease in the influence of foreign capital. They subscribed to the printed organs of the Slavophiles, appeared on their pages with articles, and in case of publishing difficulties they provided generous financial assistance.

Chizhov justified his special relationship with the merchants as follows: the industrial and commercial power is purely zemstvo in nature, the industrial and commercial environment is closer than other educated classes to the people. Since Moscow, the bearer and custodian of the Russian folk spirit, was the center of all zemstvo life, it is not surprising that the closest ties began to connect Chizhov with the "eminent Moscow merchants." He found himself at the center of a group of Moscow merchants striving for rapprochement with the Slavophile ideologists, and in search of complete, clear, definite answers to the practical questions of the present, he began to develop the economic side of the Slavophile theoretical program in accordance with the new historical conditions. At the same time, the ideal of Slavophilism - the freedom of zemstvo, communal life - spread to a new area, the area of ​​​​freedom of private enterprise.

Already in the mid-1830s, the pre-Petrine capital of Russia began to turn into a city primarily of the merchant class. A.S. Pushkin, observing the changes that took place in the character of Moscow life, drew attention to the fact that "Moscow, having lost its aristocratic splendor, flourishes in other respects: the industry, strongly patronized, revived and developed with extraordinary strength in it. The merchants grow richer and begin to settle in the chambers abandoned by the nobility" ("Journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg"). Ten years later, the German baron August Haxthausen, who traveled around Russia, wrote about the same thing ten years later: “Moscow, the center of Russian industry, has turned from a noble city into a factory ... If you ask now who owns this palace, you will get the answer: “to such and such a manufacturer” or “to such and such a merchant”, and earlier: “prince A or B”.

It was in Moscow during the reign of Emperor Alexander II that Chizhov's outstanding organizational talent and enterprise flourished. He accepted the offer of wealthy breeders, the Kostroma nobles, the Shipov brothers, to become editor-publisher of a special monthly magazine, whose task would be to protect the interests of Russian entrepreneurs in connection with the increasingly frank economic policy of the government in the spirit of free trade (free trade - English). At the same time, Chizhov and the Shipovs formed the "Society for the Promotion of Russian Industry and Trade", which, however, did not bring significant benefits due to the inertia and inertia of the merchant class.

One of the first magazines for entrepreneurs in Russia was named Vestnik Promyshlennost. It began to appear from July 1858. A year later, a weekly supplement to the magazine appeared - the newspaper Shareholder. Like Vestnik Promyshlennost, Aktsioner did everything possible to promote the construction of railways in Russia, the development of industry, and banking without the participation of foreign capital, but the newspaper was dominated by materials of a more specific, private nature.

In the mid-1960s, Chizhov led a special economic department in Ivan Aksakov's newspaper The Day, and also founded the political and economic newspaper Moskva (Moskvich) with the money of large Moscow merchants and industrialists.

"GOLDEN AGE " RAILWAY GRUNDERY

Having a practical mindset and being by nature an energetic and businesslike person, Chizhov could not confine himself to the role of a theorist of the protectionist commercial and industrial development of Russia at a crucial time for the country. Since 1857, the construction of railways was almost exclusively carried out by the Main Society of Russian Railways, in which the decisive role belonged to foreign bankers, and French engineers carried out the work. “The French simply plundered Russia,” Chizhov recalled years later, “they built badly because of ignorance of either the climate or the soil ... The French looked at Russia simply as a wild country, at the Russians, as red-skinned Indians, and exploited them shamelessly ...” blood heritage of the country" were criminally squandered. “We need real capital and efficient industrialists, and not visiting rogues operating from the back porch, who, taking advantage of chance and ignorance, get monopolies for themselves and, instead of contributing capital, absorb our own funds,” Chizhov wrote indignantly in one of the leading articles.

But some denunciations in the press were not enough. Chizhov became the initiator of the communication between Moscow and Troitse-Sergiev Posad by means of the first Russian private "exemplary and exemplary locomotive railway" by the forces of exclusively Russian workers and engineers and at the expense of Russian merchants, without the participation of foreign capital. The goal of the enterprise is to convince those who have doubts about the possibility for Russia of independent, first-class, fast, cheap and honest railway construction.

To prove the profitability of the enterprise not so much for his partners, but for the government, on which the obtaining of a construction permit depended, Chizhov conceived and carried out the following operation: he equipped six groups of young people, three people each, for a round-the-clock count of all passers-by and passing along the Troitskoye Highway to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and back. Having collected data for two months on the potential number of future passengers in this way, Chizhov could already, with numbers in his hands, object to his critics, who saw the construction of the Moscow-Troitsk railway as an "unsustainable enterprise."

In 1858, the Highest permission was received for the production of survey work. The joint-stock company of the Moscow-Troitskaya Railway did not ask for any guarantees. The capital was supposed to be raised by issuing shares, and the construction of the road was to be completed in four years.

At the organizational meeting of shareholders of the Moscow-Troitsk Railway, held on February 25, 1860, on the initiative of Chizhov, it was decided to make it a rule that in the newspaper "Shareholder" at least six times a year the board of the society should publish reports on their actions and on the state of the cash desk. Thus, for the first time in the practice of railway joint-stock companies in Russia, all orders of the board, the entire course of construction and maintenance work, the cash balance, including monthly expenses for the maintenance of the administrative and managerial apparatus, were made public and in the press. "We are of the opinion," one of the editorials of the Aktsioner newspaper said, "that the more publicity, the clearer things will go and the sooner the terribly foggy horizon of our joint-stock enterprises will clear up."

The example of the Moscow-Troitskaya road company prompted the shareholders of other private railway companies in Russia to oblige their boards to do the same. Noting with satisfaction this gratifying fact, the newspaper "Shareholder" dated May 14, 1860 reported: "Everywhere shareholders are beginning to gradually enter into their rights and understand that they are not only shareholders for that, in order to blindly approve everything that the directors of the board will either bring or offer ..."

Train traffic from Moscow to Troitse-Sergiev Posad was opened in 1862. According to contemporaries, the road turned out to be exemplary "both in terms of arrangement, and in terms of frugality of expenses, and in terms of strict accountability of management." Subsequently, it was extended through Yaroslavl to Vologda.

After failing to purchase the Nikolaev railway in 1868, Chizhov came up with a clever combination by which a group of Moscow merchants were able to buy the Moscow-Kursk railway from the government, thereby preventing its transfer into the hands of foreign companies.

"ALL IN NUMBERS AND FIGURES"

The financial difficulties of the merchant class in raising capital for the construction and acquisition of railways from the treasury urgently required the development of an internal credit system. In the mid-1960s, the government gave a certain scope to private initiative in the organization of banking, and intensified banking greenerism began in the country.

At the end of 1866, with the active participation of Chizhov, the Moscow Merchant Bank was opened. It became the largest joint-stock bank in Moscow and the second largest in Russia, remaining so until the beginning of the 20th century. The founders organized the Moscow Merchant Bank not as a joint-stock company, but as a partnership on shares, that is, in the likeness of Moscow textile enterprises. Among the main shareholders of the bank, merchants and industrialists, the majority were textile manufacturers, who were most active in the field of commodity commission and trade operations, mainly with cotton. Chizhov was unanimously elected chairman of the board of the bank.

In the summer of 1869, to "help the poor and low-credit trading people," under the direct leadership of Chizhov, the Moscow Merchant Society of Mutual Credit was established, based on principles other than ordinary credit institutions: the owners of the enterprise were not creditors, but the borrowers themselves; only members of the society were entitled to a loan and only their bills were taken into account; among themselves, the members of the society were bound by mutual guarantee (each was considered responsible for the society's debts to third parties in the amount of the loan opened to him). And in this new commercial institution, Chizhov was elected chairman by an overwhelming majority.

Chizhov believed that in entrepreneurship “it’s good to be a lamplighter, that is, to light up a business and keep it burning until this business is firmly on its feet; it will be enough. Otherwise, in any industrial business in a few years ... a routine will inevitably form, which is deadly to the extreme ... We all like to sit in a heated place, and those who are reluctant to arrange a new one, but don’t feed me rolls, just give me a new one, if possible - big and difficult.” Therefore, having laid, according to Ivan Aksakov, "a solid foundation for private bank credit in Moscow, and, one might say, in all of Russia," Chizhov handed over the reins of government in both banks to his closest associates.

"A MAN OF A STRONG SPIRIT AND AN ACTIVE HEART"

In essence, Chizhov's whole life was spent in deeds and ideas. Personal life did not work out, and he did not even think about it.

Chizhov devoted the last segment of the earthly term allotted to him to active participation in the financial and industrial foundation. He endlessly organized, built, charitable. His daily routine is loaded to the limit: in the morning - the board of the Yaroslavl railway, at noon - the board of the Kursk, in the evening - the board of the Moscow merchant bank. In addition, he finds time to negotiate the formation of a joint-stock company of the Kiev-Brest railway, to deal with the economic justification and profitability calculations of the Kostroma and Kirzhatskaya branches of the Yaroslavl railway with the prospect of extending them to Siberia. He created the Tashkent joint-stock silk-winding company, wrote the charter of a rural bank in the Poltava province.

Chizhov planned the construction of a circular railway around Moscow, as he was convinced that for the city it "would be just a boon": "Firstly, four bridges will be built across the Moscow River with passage for crews and steamboats ... Secondly, many stations will be built to send goods along all roads without reloading and passengers - to all neighborhoods and to all roads. Thirdly, thirty million poods will be less transported by cab drivers around the city of Moscow. Suppose, 60 poods per cart, - and then 500,000 dray carts will decrease on the streets of Moscow. The city will certainly be heavily built ... the transportation of building materials will be more convenient and cheaper, and therefore the construction of houses will become much cheaper ... "

Together with A.I. Koshelev, Chizhov was among the founders of two commercial organizations under the Moscow City Duma: water supply companies and gas street lighting companies. He even had a chance to organize and operate a network of bath and laundry establishments in Moscow.

“I can’t get used to being old,” Fyodor Vasilyevich wrote at that time, experiencing an incredible spiritual uplift. “Enterprises, now industrial, now mental undertakings, are constantly swarming in my head”; "My motto is: work, after it - work, and after everything - work; if there is work, it makes me very happy"; “In general, I have been crazy from birth, a maniac, I have lived all my life maniac, passed from one hobby to another and now I have reached complete insanity in industrial activity”; "New enterprises appear; entrepreneurs turn to me; do they think that I ... is smart and experienced, do they need influence ... really, I don’t know how to decide. And, meanwhile, the capitalists are really following me"; “Until now, I have paid my debts caused by my enterprises; now they are almost all paid, and I don’t know how to spend money on life and I don’t see the need to increase spending on something that has never been an indispensable part of life for me ... I work hard, I get a lot for work, but I never worked in order to get more money: work has become the atmosphere of my [existence], without it I would definitely be lost”; "I am exactly the same ascetic of labor, as the medieval monks were, only they devoted themselves to prayers, and I to work"; "Confessing sincerely, I think that self-esteem also works a lot here ... For me, it could not be satisfied with sluggish activity in science, even less with vulgar bureaucratic waters; be sure to give me a living work of the mind, give me anxiety, worries, excitement, otherwise my life will not be in life!"

Considering money not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end, Chizhov liked to repeat: "Money spoils a person, so I remove them from me"; "I can't get used to considering them my property, they require use - this force needs work." At the same time, he did not like unhealthy excitement around his disinterested deeds and acted in accordance with the Testament given by Jesus Christ in His Sermon on the Mount: “Look, do not give your alms before people so that they see you ... So, when you do alms, do not blow before you, as hypocrites do in synagogues and on the streets, so that people glorify them ... When you do alms, let your left hand yours does not know what the right one is doing, and that your almsgiving be in secret; and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly" (Matt.: VI: 1).

And indeed, sometimes those whom Fedor Vasilyevich helped did not even guess who was their savior. Today, it is often possible to establish only by indirect signs that in this or that good deed, under the name of "a donor who wished to remain anonymous", none other than Chizhov was hiding. And he showed special generosity in relation to everything related to public education.

In an effort to bring education closer to the needs of the developing domestic industry, he did everything possible to promote the training of his own technical intelligentsia and workers, supported several scholarship holders, paid for trips of young specialists to foreign countries to get acquainted with the organization of affairs at industrial enterprises and railway transport.

Chizhov's secretary recalled how Fyodor Vasilyevich once learned from a conversation with him that two of his university comrades, studying practical mechanics at the Moscow Technical School, would like to get acquainted with the organization of production at mechanical plants in Western Europe. But everything rested on the lack of funds. Not knowing them personally, Chizhov asked them to immediately invite these young people to him and, after instructions on where they could best work, "directly, without any request, almost by force, handed over ... the funds necessary for these trips with the obligation never to think about returning him, and with the funds, when they turn out, to transfer them to others ... for the same purpose."

Chizhov was the initiator of the establishment in Moscow at the expense of members of joint-stock railway companies of the railway school named after. A.I. Delvig, according to his project and plan, the "Collegium of Pavel Galagan" was opened in Kyiv, which for a long time remained one of the best educational institutions in Russia. Chizhov bequeathed his entire fixed capital in the shares of the Kursk railway, which amounted to 6 million rubles for their sale in 1889, for the construction and maintenance of five vocational schools in his homeland, in the Kostroma province.

Chizhov's authority in society in general, and among entrepreneurs in particular, was great. His opinions were listened to, his opinion was valued. His impeccable honesty was legendary. His name, standing at the head of any enterprise, was the best guarantee for the loyalty and success of the work begun. Here are just some of the statements of people who knew Chizhov.

“He was a strong man, a man with power,” Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov recalled. “Before all his other qualities, it was precisely the presence of inner strength that was felt in him: the strength of conviction, the strength of will, adamant, despotic about himself. Looking at his work, methodical, distinct to the smallest detail, anyone would say that such a systematic application of the will to business is possible only with firm calmness and composure of spirit. Meanwhile, he was the most ardent, most passionate person ... The whole combination of such apparently opposite properties was especially attractive in him: it was this that gave him such moral beauty and such power over others.

Speaking about Chizhov's influence on those around him, his personal secretary and first biographer Alexei Cherokov wrote: "It was some kind of incomprehensible force, power, special, tangible for everyone, to conquer and subjugate everything."

“Chizhov was a scientifically educated and “subtle” person, a noble, sensitive, sharp mind, by no means amenable to any compromises,” Savva Ivanovich Mamontov characterized Chizhov, his “pupil” Savva Ivanovich Mamontov. To siege the impudent, to tear off the mask from the sycophant - in this Fyodor Vasilyevich was a virtuoso. Everyone knew and feared him like that ... "

"WE WILL REVIEW OUR NORTH..."

Chizhov's last major commercial and industrial undertaking was the formation of the Association of the Arkhangelsk-Murmansk Express Shipping Company on the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean. His entrepreneurial interest was combined here with a long-standing desire to revive the northern outskirts of Russia: "Arkhangelsk was a harbor back in the days of the ancient Novgorodians, Vologda Ivan the Terrible thought to appoint the capital of the Russian Kingdom - but Petersburg forgot all the old memories and traditions, and I will certainly try to revive them bit by bit."

With the help of the establishment of a joint-stock trade and industrial partnership, Chizhov planned to begin the economic development of the northern outskirts of European Russia, to develop fish and animal industries among the Pomors. On the islands from the White Sea to Novaya Zemlya, he intended to establish the extraction of guano - a cheap fertilizer for the barren lands of the northern provinces. “I’m already imagining,” Chizhov dreamed, “how we will revive our North, start cities there on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, clean up the Northern Dvina, we will transport bread and other vital products from the Volga, and from there we will bring cheap fish food ... "

However, the enterprise founded by Chizhov did not at first bring the expected dividends to the shareholders. Bureya was thrown onto the rocks by the steamship "Onega". In the unprecedentedly severe winter of 1875-1876, the Libava Bay, which had never frozen before, was covered with ice and the delivery of goods to Libava became impossible. The newly acquired steamship "Kem" was wrecked off the Scottish coast. Fisheries near the Murmansk coast brought, against expectations, insignificant revenue.

Chizhov endured all hardships hard, although he warned each new member of the partnership in advance about the inevitability of losses, aimed not at the expectation of profits, but at serving the great cause of contributing to the prosperity of the fatherland. Left alone with himself, he wrote in his diary: “I seem to be indifferent to all the failures, but meanwhile ... maybe I won’t have the strength to endure them ... Surely such a true, purely patriotic cause will not burn out? .. "

In order to somehow support the partnership that was on the verge of collapse, Chizhov borrowed 75 thousand rubles, investing them in the business. A few months before his death, he again donated 200 thousand rubles to the partnership, having collected and pledged all his free interest-bearing papers.

Not having time to complete much of what was planned, Chizhov died on November 14, 1877 at his desk. Ivan Aksakov, who saw him half an hour after his death, recalled: "He sat dead in his armchairs, with an expression of some kind of courageous thought and fearlessness on his forehead ... a man of a strong spirit and an active heart." Ilya Efimovich Repin captured this tragic morning in his painting "The Death of Chizhov".

Fyodor Vasilyevich Chizhov was buried in Moscow, at the cemetery of the St. Danilov Monastery next to the grave of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol.

Several years after Chizhov's death, the Partnership of the Arkhangelsk-Murmansk Express Shipping Company got back on its feet. In 1881, in memory of Chizhov, at a general meeting of shareholders, it was decided to name one of the new ships of the partnership after him. The steamer "Fyodor Chizhov" sailed the northern seas until the end of the First World War. On May 13, 1918, during military operations in the Vaida-guba bay, it was torpedoed by a German submarine and sunk.

The memory of the patriotic businessman Fyodor Vasilyevich Chizhov also sank, disappeared into oblivion: he did not fit into the Procrustean bed of the "class approach", proclaimed by the new government as the measure of all values. We only have to regret that Russian literature of the 19th century, the great teacher of life, in an agonizing search for an answer to the question: "What to do?", concentrated all its attention on anti-heroes, "superfluous people" with an invincibly destructive charm, and passed by such a type of Russian man-creator, a real hero of his time, like Chizhov.

INSTEAD OF AFTERLOOK

A modest, white marble tombstone on Chizhov's grave in the form of an ancient, pre-Petrine times, a cross and a slab with carved dates of birth and death has not been preserved. In 1929, the St. Danilov Monastery was closed, and on its territory, surrounded by high monastic walls, a reception center was organized for the children of repressed parents and juvenile offenders. The cemetery at the monastery, which once represented a real reserved corner, "where representatives of Slavophilism and people close to them in spirit, gathered in a close family," was destroyed, and unique tombstones dispersed in a truncated form, without crosses and other Orthodox symbols, to neighboring cemeteries. It was possible to save only the remains of Yazykov, Gogol and Khomyakov - in 1931 they were transferred to the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent. And the burial place of Chizhov was razed to the ground.

Even earlier, the name of Chizhov was knocked down from the pediments of five industrial schools, donated by him to Russia, and the paintings by S.A. Korovin, which were in one of the schools, one of which depicted Chizhov working at the anvil, as well as his lifetime bust, made by S.I. Mamontov, disappeared without a trace.

But among the people, magnificent buildings built in the neoclassical style continued to be stubbornly called "Chizhovsky". In them, more than one generation of Russian youth received a special technical education, which became the real heirs of Chizhov's millions. And among them is the pride of Russian science, the outstanding Russian chemist Grigory Semenovich Petrov. It is to him that Russia owes the invention in 1913 of the first domestic plastic - carbolite, and universal glue, which became known under the brand name "BF". But in the life of Professor Petrov there were no metropolitan universities or institutes - all his education was limited to studying in the Kostroma "chizhovka".

Time has put everything in its place - this is the great justice of history. It's hard for us, gradually the memory returns. For the last fifteen years, anniversaries associated with the name of Chizhov have been solemnly celebrated in his homeland. The name of the glorious countryman was returned to the Kostroma Chemical-Mechanical College, which since 1927 bore the name of L.B. Krasin. A museum has been created at the technical school, reflecting its history. On the building of the Chizhov School in Anfimov, not far from Chukhloma, a memorial plaque was opened telling about its founder. Memorial services are served in churches. On the territory of the revived St. Danilov Monastery in Moscow, which since the early 1980s has become the residence of His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus', in the place where the ruined necropolis was once located, a chapel was erected - in memory of everyone who found their last refuge here. Since February 2005, the Fyodor Chizhov high-speed train has been running on the Moscow-Sergiev Posad route. The day is not far off - and the modern ocean liner Fedor Chizhov will moor to one of the berths of the Northern Sea Port (a resolution on this matter was adopted at the conference held in Murmansk in May last year, dedicated to the 130th anniversary of the Arkhangelsk-Murmansk express shipping company) ...

"Nature gives birth to people, life buries them, and history resurrects, wandering on their graves," Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky once wrote. I would like to believe that the tablets of history, on which the name of a remarkable entrepreneurial talent, the glorious Russian patriot Fyodor Vasilyevich Chizhov, is engraved in golden letters, will no longer be covered with a ruthless patina of forgetful ingratitude of descendants.

Today we are in dire need of such disinterested figures, people of duty and honor as Chizhov was, who cared not about his own benefit and speculative gain, but about strengthening the power, prosperity, benefit and glory of the fatherland. And the sooner this type of enlightened, patriotic entrepreneurs appears in our country, the sooner Russia will be reborn.

An outstanding Russian publicist, mathematician, art critic, major industrialist, financier, publisher.

Fedor Vasilyevich Chizhov was born on March 11, 1811 in Kostroma, in the family of a gymnasium teacher V.V. Chizhov, who came from the clergy and U.D. Chizhova (Ivanova), the daughter of an impoverished nobleman, who was brought up in the family of her distant relative, Count I.A. Tolstoy. Fedor had three younger sisters. Subsequently (1822), Chizhov's father received the right of hereditary nobility. He became the godfather of the boy, after whom he received his name.

From childhood, Chizhov showed aptitude for mathematics. In 1823, the Chizhov family moved to St. Petersburg, and in 1829 Fedor entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. While studying at the university, Chizhov participated in a pro-Western literary and philosophical circle. In 1832 he graduated from the university with a Ph.D. in physical and mathematical sciences, and began teaching mathematical disciplines there. There was barely enough money to live on, and Fedor Vasilyevich was engaged in tutoring. Working under the guidance of Academician M.V. Ostrogradsky, Chizhov defended his master's thesis in 1836 and received a professorship at the university. Until the end of the 1830s, Chizhov published many works in the field of mathematics and mechanics, and also began to turn to the field of humanitarian knowledge - literature, ethics and aesthetics. By 1840, Chizhov's interests had completely shifted to the humanities, which forced him to leave the university. Chizhov became interested in politics, philosophy, history, literature. He was also interested in the history of world art, which he went abroad to study in 1841.

Of the countries of Western Europe, Chizhov was most attracted to Italy. There he worked on the history of the Venetian Republic, got acquainted with works of art and architectural monuments. In Rome, Chizhov met and became friends with and. A friendship began between the young scientist and the painter A.A. Ivanov, which greatly mutually enriched both.

In Italy, thanks to Yazykov, Chizhov became acquainted with the course of Slavophilism. Subsequent trips to the Czech Republic, Dalmatia, and Montenegro fascinated Chizhov even more with the ideas of Slavophilism and Pan-Slavism. In addition, Chizhov decided to provide practical assistance to fraternal Dalmatia. He illegally transported Orthodox icons, church vestments and liturgical books from the Kostroma benefactor P.V. Golubkov in the amount of three thousand rubles. For this Chizhov received the first denunciation in the Third Section.

In 1844 he went to Paris, where he met with representatives of Polish parties and French social and political movements. There he met with, was carried away by his ideas.

In 1845, Chizhov again visited the South Slavic countries: Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Slavonia. The traveler described his travel impressions, meetings with prominent South Slavic writers and public and political figures in his diary. Soon Chizhov went to Moscow to personally meet the Moscow members of the Slavophil circle.

In Moscow, Professor Chizhov met the families of the Slavophiles Elagin, Sverbeev, Aksakov, Khomyakov. The enthusiastic attitude towards Slavophilism was soon replaced by a sober assessment of the shortcomings of this trend. Chizhov criticized the Slavophiles for their inertia and contemplation, calling for active social work. Chizhov proposed to combine the ideas of Slavophilism and the best practical Western experience, in particular, in the field of education and the development of technical knowledge in Russia. Being a staunch opponent of the monarchical system, Chizhov considered the federal Slavic republic the ideal of a political system.

Soon the opportunity presented itself to express their views from the public platform: Chizhov was offered to become the editor of the updated Russkiy Vestnik. In 1846, he again went abroad in search of correspondents for a future publication. However, upon his return to Russia in May 1847, he was arrested and soon deported to Ukraine without the right to reside in the capitals.

In Ukrainian exile, Chizhov took up a new business for him. In 1850, he leased mulberry plantations in Trypillia and began to actively establish the production of raw silk. As a solid person, Chizhov visited the best plantations in the south of Russia and even worked himself as an apprentice and an ordinary worker on one of them. Chizhov sought to involve local peasants and landowners in promising production, giving them seedlings of mulberry trees and silkworm larvae. In addition, at his plantations, he organized a practical school for boys - future sericulture.

In 1853, Chizhov summarized his experience in the book "Letters on Sericulture", published in St. Petersburg and awarded the medal of the Moscow Society of Agriculture.

In 1855, after the death of Emperor Nicholas I and political changes in the country, the Slavophiles began publishing the journal Russkaya Beseda. In it, Chizhov managed to publish his "Notes of a Traveler in the Slavic Countries" and several articles on Western art and Russian icon painting, which became a kind of manifesto of the aesthetic views of the Slavophiles. In 1857, the Russian Imperial Academy of Arts awarded F. V. Chizhov the title of a free community member, and in 1858 he was elected a full member of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.

In 1857, Chizhov received permission to move to Moscow, where a new period of his activity began: from now on, he had to do a lot of practical work to put into practice the socio-economic program of Slavophilism. It was, in the words of Chizhov, "rough, daily work." On this basis, Chizhov became close friends with representatives of commercial and industrial Moscow, who shared the views of the Slavophiles on the future of Russia's socio-political development. Chizhov considered the development of national industry, the policy of protectionism, the rational use of natural resources, the solution of off-road problems and the creation of an extensive transport network to be promising and priority.

In 1858, Chizhov began editing the new journal Vestnik Promyshlennosti and its supplement, the Aktsioner newspaper. In the mid-60s, Chizhov led special economic issues in the newspaper I.S. Aksakov "Day". In 1867, he founded a new political and economic newspaper, Moskva, with money from Moscow merchants and industrialists.

In 1858, F.V. Chizhova s. Soon Chizhov, Delvig and the Kostroma brothers Shipov established the Moscow-Troitsk Railway Society. Wealthy merchants-farmers I.F. invested their capital in this society. Mamontov and N.G. Ryumin. The society was created with the aim of building the first private railway in Russia by exclusively Russian workers, Russian engineers and with the capital of Russian merchants. Previously, Chizhov and Mamontov calculated the payback of the road in a very original way: groups of six students counted the number of all passers-by and those passing along the Trinity Highway to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and back around the clock. The young Savva Mamontov, also the future builder of this road and executor F.V., also took part in the duty. Chizhov. Soon the Highest permission for the construction of the road was received. Chizhov considered it necessary to make mandatory open reporting on the cash flow of the railway shareholders through publications in the Shareholder newspaper.

The first stage of the railway was launched on August 18, 1862 from Moscow to Sergiev Posad. The first private Russian railway turned out to be exemplary in terms of reliability, well-being, frugality of financial investments and transparency of reports. In 1870, a continuation of the road to Yaroslavl was built, and in 1872 a narrow gauge was laid to Vologda.

In 1869, Moscow investors formed a partnership for the purchase of the Moscow-Kursk railway, of which Chizhov was elected chairman. Subsequently, he became chairman of the board of the road.

Chizhov's financial activities in the field of railway construction gave him the necessary experience and raised his authority in financial circles. In 1866, the shareholders elected Chizhov as chairman of the board of the Moscow Merchant Bank they had established, and in 1869 he became the head of the Moscow Merchant Society of Mutual Credit.

Chizhov's interest in the transport sector was not limited to the construction of railways. In the mid-1870s, he initiated the creation of the Arkhangelsk-Murmansk urgent shipping company, which navigated the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean. This undertaking of his, as well as the establishment of the White Sea and North Dvina joint-stock companies, was a step towards the implementation of Chizhov's long-standing idea of ​​​​revitalizing the Russian North and actively developing its wealth. Chizhov advocated the even economic development of all regions of Russia, criticized the excessive centralization of power structures and public institutions. He considered the absence of a consistently pursued policy of protectionism one of the reasons for the slow and uneven development of the country. Chizhov pinned great hopes on the zemstvos, on the wide and active participation in their activities of a new force - Russian industrialists and merchants. Chizhov considered it necessary and urgent to develop and reform the system of technical education in Russia and he himself made a significant contribution to this direction.

At the end of his life, F. V. Chizhov bequeathed all his acquired capital to the noble goals of creating new educational institutions in Russia. To his executors - and A.D. Polenov - he instructed to invest the funds he had accumulated in the establishment and maintenance of five vocational schools in Kostroma, Kologriv, Chukhloma and Makariev. Secondary and one higher school, technical, agricultural and medical profile were opened in 1892-1897. They became exemplary Russian educational institutions at that time, having an excellent material base, highly qualified teaching staff, and developed infrastructure. Education was conducted on a fee basis, the fee was low. Poor students were exempted from fees and received benefits. School graduates later became outstanding engineers, business executives and scientists.

Fedor Vasilyevich Chizhov died in Moscow on November 14, 1877 in his office at his desk. He was a man of encyclopedic knowledge and fantastic capacity for work. A brilliant mathematician, talented art critic, philosopher, politician and public figure, risky and successful financier, thrifty and pragmatic business executive, philanthropist and patriot. A man of the future ahead of his time.

Until 1829, his grave was located in. After the closing of the monastery, the tombstone disappeared, and the place of burial was lost.

The name of Chizhov today is the Kostroma Energy College. The electric train - the express train of the Yaroslavl railway is called "Fyodor Chizhov". In Kostroma in 2011, a stone was laid at the foundation of the monument to F.V. Chizhov.

Other countries

Economists by the Grace of God: Fedor Chizhov

In the 19th century, all of Russia knew him. Industrialists, merchants, railroad workers, scientists, artists and writers corresponded with him, looking for meetings. “The judgments of this thinker and practice quickly spread throughout Europe. There was no fairer and higher opinion if it sounded from his lips.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Fedor Chizhov

Fedor Vasilievich Chizhov(1811-1877) - public figure, writer and entrepreneur, was born in the family of a teacher in the Kostroma provincial gymnasium. The father raised his son as a true Christian, instilled strong moral principles in the child, taught him to think strictly logically, and enriched his mind with philosophical ideas.

Although Chizhov belonged to the nobility, due to the deteriorating financial situation of the family, he went through a harsh school of labor, need and deprivation in childhood and youth. Nevertheless, he managed to graduate from St. Petersburg University, showing a special ability in mathematics. Wrote the first national essay on steam engines. At the same time, he deeply studied the history of art, which he considered "one of the most direct paths to the history of mankind." Been abroad - in Italy, Germany, Bohemia, South Slavic countries, in France. In Paris, he studied the ideas of Fourier and Saint-Simon, but they did not satisfy him due to their excessive earthiness and taking into account only the material side of life.

Communicating with the most prominent Slavophiles, Chizhov became deeply committed to the belief in the special purpose of the “Russian stem from the root of Japhet”, in the words of the founding father of the doctrine, Alexei Khomyakov. In 1847 he was arrested for unauthorized visits to the South Slavic countries and expelled from the capitals to Ukraine. Only in 1856 did Alexander II allow Chizhov to return to Moscow.

In the industrial and commercial center of the country, a movement focused on national values ​​was gaining strength; often new enterprises were founded for patriotic reasons. However, the owners of many sectors of the Russian economy were foreigners. Chizhov's heart ached from this. Its cherished goal is to educate the people and promote the comprehensive development of industry and trade in Russia.

Kostroma Secondary Mechanical and Technical School named after F.V. Chizhov. 1910

The founder of Vestnik Promyshlennost Alexander Shipov and his brother Dmitry, the owner of a paper mill and a mechanical plant, accepted Chizhov’s ideas in a different way. They instructed Fyodor Vasilyevich to edit the magazine and its supplement - the newspaper "Shareholder" (later - together with Professor of Moscow University Ivan Babst).

Each issue contained an overview of the economic situation in Russia and abroad, the state of industry and trade, novelties in mechanics and technology, fresh ideas and works in the field of economics and finance. The titles of many articles speak of problems that have not been resolved in Russia to this day, for example, "On forest products as a wealth that we still do not know how to use." The authors advocated the rapid development of industry in Russia, argued the need for the abolition of serfdom, emphasizing that "free labor is an indispensable condition for every industrial business", and advocating the replacement of corvée with free hiring. Already in the first issue of the magazine it was noted that the construction of factories and factories is often carried out by completely ignorant people. Whoever has money, he builds, "but out of twenty breeders, hardly at least one understands and studies the matter." Usually they copy what others, according to rumors, are doing well.

In the early days of the development of industry in Russia, factory owners and factory owners sought to make the greatest profit and cruelly exploited the workers, reducing wages to a minimum. And the Slavophils insisted that it should not only fully satisfy all needs, but also contain some surplus in order to ensure the development of man. In essays about individual industrial centers (for example, "The Village of Ivanovo" - about the center of the Russian cotton industry), it was shown that the unreasonable life of workers, deprived of education and spiritual enlightenment, becomes one of the social ulcers. In the article “Which way should the education of the lower classes of society go?” Chizhov argues that restricting access to knowledge is a crime against society and God.

For the first time in Russia, the journal raised and comprehensively substantiated the question of the need to create private banks. In England, where capital accumulated gradually, they have existed for a long time. Immigrants who did not have large funds settled in the United States, and therefore joint-stock banks became widespread in this country. In Russia, there is no trust in such a form, because there is no single owner here. Cases of bankruptcy of joint-stock companies are not uncommon; it happened that the founders, having taken the money of the depositors, disappeared in an unknown direction. Therefore, there will be more confidence in private banks.

Since 1864, Chizhov headed the economic department in Ivan Aksakov's newspaper The Day, where he initiated a revision of the customs tariff that was ruinous for Russia. Invariably stands for the expansion of the rights of the zemstvo. Tries to extend the Slavophile ideal of freedom to private enterprise. The goal is to educate the people and promote the comprehensive development of industry and trade in our country.

Opening of traffic from Moscow to Sergiev Posad. 1862

By the way, Chizhov sought to apply his ideas in life, primarily in the field of concrete economics, and he was very successful in this. In order to convince those who doubt Russia's ability to build good roads on its own, he, together with Lieutenant General Andrei Delvig (cousin of Anton, Pushkin's lyceum friend) and his longtime partners, the Shipovs, initiated the laying of the first Russian private "exemplary locomotive railway". It went from Moscow to Sergiev Posad, was subsequently extended to Yaroslavl, and then to Vologda. Built exclusively by Russian workers and engineers, with the money of domestic capitalists, the road turned out to be truly exemplary - both in terms of arrangement, and frugality in costs, and strict accountability in management.

Chizhov became a member of another board - the Moscow-Saratov railway. But large-scale construction required the development of banking and the credit system. With the active participation of Chizhov, the Moscow Merchant Bank was opened in 1866, which became the second largest in Russia. It was organized by the founders not as a joint-stock company, but as a partnership on shares. In the first two years alone, the bank's fixed capital grew from 1.2 to 5 million rubles. In "help ... poor and low-credit trading people" in 1869, the Moscow Merchant Society of Mutual Credit was established, Chizhov was elected chairman.

Having established the work of these institutions, he handed over the reins of government in them to his closest associates. And he, together with a group of industrialists, decided to buy the Moscow-Kursk railway from the government, thereby preventing its transfer to foreign companies. To do this, it was necessary to develop a complex financial operation, which was crowned with success. By 1889, when the government again regained this railway, having bought it to the treasury, the value of the shares of the MKZHD increased several times, and more than six million rubles were set aside in the name of Fyodor Chizhov, who had already died by that time.

Having amassed a large fortune, he had little interest in money. He lived as a bachelor, spent only the bare necessities on himself, used his income to buy books and help those in need. “Money spoils a person,” he said, “and therefore I remove them from me.” He helped public education institutions a lot, personally supported scholarship holders, paid for trips of young specialists abroad to get acquainted with the state of affairs at industrial enterprises and railway transport.

Chizhov advocated the creation of a network of communications, the development of metallurgy and mechanical engineering, and the widespread opening of technical educational institutions. In 1876, he organized the construction of the strategic Donetsk coal railway to Mariupol, headed by the young Savva Mamontov.

Table medal "Fyodor Vasilyevich Chizhov. 1877-1902".

Chizhov's major commercial and industrial enterprise was the laying of sea routes in the Russian North. The Arkhangelsk-Murmansk Urgent (i.e. regular) shipping company undertook to carry out the project along the White Sea and the Arctic Ocean. This project embodied the long-standing desire of the entrepreneur to revive the northern outskirts of Russia. Commenting on the establishment of the White Sea and North Dvina joint-stock companies, which began to develop the wealth of the territory, Chizhov pointed out: “The structure of the society ... should please, as proof that activity and entrepreneurship are manifested not only in the capitals, which until now almost exclusively worked both for themselves and for the provinces. Such a concentration, harmful in all respects, is especially harmful in the matter of industry precisely because, by concentrating all forces and benefits to one center, it prevents the formation of ... new capital in the provinces, stops ... the further development of regions remote from the capitals ... ”Chizhov argued the need for a uniform development of the regions of the Russian Empire.

According to northerners, he became for Russia the same key and significant figure as Mikhailo Lomonosov. Born a century later, the entrepreneur managed to bring to life what the scientist-encyclopedist brilliantly foresaw.

In an effort to bring public education closer to the needs of the developing domestic industry, Chizhov contributed in every possible way to the preparation of the technical intelligentsia and workers for its needs. He bequeathed his huge capital for those times to charitable purposes - the construction of a maternity hospital and the opening of technical schools in the Kostroma province.

Savva Mamontov, student and executor of Chizhov, fulfilled the mentor's will. Five first-class technical schools were built for two million rubles in the Kostroma province, the remaining four million became inviolable capital, providing for the annual maintenance of educational institutions and bonuses to authors of the best works in the field of industry.

(1811-1877)

Fyodor Vasilyevich Chizhov (1811-1877) - Russian industrialist, public figure, scientist. Supporter of the Slavophiles, publisher and editor of socio-political magazines and newspapers, organizer of railway construction, philanthropist.

Fyodor Chizhov was born in Kostroma in the family of V. V. Chizhov, a native of the clergy (he received the right to hereditary nobility in 1822) and U. D. Chizhova, the daughter of an impoverished nobleman. His godfather was F. I. Tolstoy - "American". Until the age of 3 he lived in a village with his grandmother near Galich, then moved to Kostroma, and later to St. Petersburg.

Thanks to early revealed mathematical abilities, he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University. Since 1829, he has been participating in "Holy Friday" - a circle of students and graduates who gathered at A.V. Nikitenko. The circle criticized negative social phenomena in Russia from pro-Western positions.

In 1832, Chizhov brilliantly graduated from the university with a Ph.D. in physical and mathematical sciences.

At the age of 21, Chizhov began teaching algebra, trigonometry, analytical and descriptive geometry, the theory of shadows and perspective as an adjunct professor at St. Petersburg University, and preparing a master's thesis under the guidance of Academician M.V. Ostrogradsky. Being short of money, Chizhov is engaged in tutoring. In 1836, Chizhov defended his dissertation and received a professorship. He is highly regarded by students and colleagues at the university.

In the late 1830s, Chizhov published many articles, reviews, and translations in the fields of mathematics, mechanics, literature, aesthetics, and morality. By 1840, Chizhov's interests turned to the field of humanitarian knowledge, a desire for social significance awakened in him, and under the pretext of deteriorating health, he left the university.
In 1858, Chizhov met A. I. Delvig. Together with him and the Shipov brothers (Kostroma noblemen), he established the Society of the Moscow-Troitsk Railway, in which tax-farmers N. G. Ryumin and I. F. Mamontov are involved. It is supposed to build the first private road exclusively by Russian workers and engineers and with the money of Russian merchants without the participation of foreign capital.

Initially, it was decided to build a road to Sergiev Posad, 66 miles long. To justify the profitability of building the road, Chizhov organizes groups of students from the Moscow Technical School for a round-the-clock count of all passers-by and those passing along the Troitskoye Highway to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and back. Based on the results of the calculations, an article is published in the "Bulletin of Industry" and a note is sent to St. Petersburg. In July 1858, the highest permission was received for the production of survey work. On the initiative of Chizhov, regular publication of reports of the Company's Board in the newspaper "Shareholder" was adopted as a rule.

The movement of trains on the Moscow-Troitsk railway was opened on August 18, 1862. According to contemporaries, the road turned out to be exemplary both in terms of structure, thriftiness of expenses, and strict accountability of management.

In 1870, a road from Sergiev Posad to Yaroslavl was opened, and in 1872, a narrow gauge railway to Vologda.

In 1869, the Moscow capitalists formed a partnership for the purchase of the Moscow-Kursk railway, with Chizhov elected chairman. He also becomes the chairman of the board of the road after its purchase.
In the mid-1860s, the credit system was liberalized, and Chizhov was elected chairman of the board of the established Moscow Merchant Bank. Among the shareholders of the bank, the majority were textile manufacturers from the central provinces.

In 1869, under the leadership of Chizhov, the Moscow Merchant Society of Mutual Credit was opened.
Chizhov bequeathed his entire fixed capital to the establishment and maintenance of five vocational schools. Two vocational schools should be built in Kostroma: a lower chemical-technical school and a secondary mechanical-technical school. Four more lower schools, built in Kologriv, Chukhloma and in Galich or Makariev, were supposed to produce highly skilled craftsmen. Schools were opened in 1894-1897. The tuition fee in the lower school was 3 rubles. per year, the average school - 30 rubles. Poor students were exempted from paying, received benefits from special school funds. Chizhov schools had first-class equipment and an excellent staff of teachers, teachers were recruited from graduates of the capital's higher educational institutions, and the best students were sent for internships abroad. Their graduates were willingly accepted to state and private enterprises. Now in the building of the Mechanics and Technical School is the Kostroma Energy College. F. V. Chizhova.

In addition, Chizhov ordered the founding of a maternity hospital in Kostroma and an educational obstetric institution attached to it.