99% of the finds that we happen to pick up in plowed fields are coins or various types of metal-plastic. In general, items that carry virtually no historical information. Well, maybe just the date of manufacture. That’s why I really love finds with history and, of course, collect them. Three kilograms of lead seals, a Nuremberg counting token, a grommet from a canvas tent with the name of the company and, of course, uniform buttons. It’s especially offensive when it comes to seals, when, having found a copy in very good condition, everything can be read: the city, the name of the owner of the company, and even what he did and what he sold. But the Internet can’t help in any way – it’s a shame. It’s also a pleasure to learn information from old crosses or identify themes on rings, for example, the well-known and frequently encountered motif “Faith, Hope, Love.” And about the old badges, signs and cockades that I found, I could write a separate article. But today we will talk about one object, which, I am sure, most comrades, upon discovery, would mistake for garbage, with the subsequent standard fate for any incomprehensible contraption being to lie in a heap on the edge of a field by the road with traffic jams, wire and other rubbish. < /p>
I probably did the same if a couple of months ago I had not read, more out of boredom than to broaden my horizons, a very informative article about a Russian entrepreneur of the early 20th century. The article was loudly entitled “Russian Henry Ford,” which didn’t immediately inspire confidence in me. Well, I don’t like it when publicists and home-grown biographers begin to compare talented and brilliant people who have created and created something talented and brilliant with their well-publicized, but truly famous colleagues. This is especially often used by biographers in our country. The second Alain Delon, our Stephen King, the Russian Houdini, and many more such examples can be given. However, I read the article and the fate of this “Russian Ford” really interested me. Well, if only because it should definitely and unambiguously be taught about it in the school history curriculum.
Alexander Vasilyevich Chichkin – Russian dairy magnate.
Sasha Chichkin was born in the village of Koprino, Yaroslavl province in 1862. The family in which the boy was born and grew up was extremely poor, his father worked as a pilot, his mother raised the children. It is known that Alexander was the youngest among three brothers. As an understanding of the level of poverty in which the future millionaire had to grow up, Chichkin himself recalled the earthen floors in their house covered with rotten straw. From the young age of eight, Sasha got a part-time job as a housekeeper at the Yugsko-Dorofeevsky Monastery, where Father Fyodor was in charge of everything. The boy turned out to be smart, active, not afraid of work, and most importantly, he was very eager to study.
And here we must understand that it is not easy for the little boy Sasha, the son of a poor Volga pilot, to decide to become a dairy magnate. The fact is that in the village of Koprino, in the same 1862, two capital entrepreneurs opened a peasant artel cheese factory. The history of the creation of this cheese factory is very funny and I simply cannot pass by without telling you. Although I must warn you right away that the story itself is very similar to a tale or a commercial legend, or maybe someone simply remembers the tales of envious competitors.
Industrial cheese making in Russia began with the fact that Nikolai Vasilyevich Vereshchagin, brother of the famous Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin, married a former serf without his father’s blessing and, borrowing money from friends, left with his wife for Switzerland. According to another version, he left with friends. Where, in modern terms, I worked a little as a guest worker at the cheese factory of a respectable Swiss. At that time, Russian peasants fed most of their milk to livestock. To say that cheese was not made here is not the right way to say it, but this product was not as widespread as in Europe. Vereshchagin quickly calculated the profits from cheese production in the Russian Empire, since milk was almost free, little remained to be done. Convince the peasants that making cheese is a profitable business and naturally teach them how to produce this same cheese on an industrial scale. Vereshchagin’s commercial interest and entrepreneurial logic are easy to follow. Peasants make cheese, he buys it in bulk, logistics, customs, and his own people at cheese exchanges in Europe. Very respectable people from the Free Economic Society became interested in Vereshchagin’s project; under their patronage, Nikolai Vasilyevich received a state grant for the development of cheese making in the empire.
Inspired by this turn of events and his own enthusiasm, Vereshchagin began to travel around the towns and villages of the Vladimir and Vologda provinces campaigning on the topic of the profitability of the cheese business as such. Such is the coach of the nineteenth century. But somehow things didn’t work out right away. Either Nikolai Vasilyevich himself was not a convincing speaker, or the peasants still could not get over how the state abandoned them with the liberation reform. And then some metropolitan dandy says that a certain product that smells like three-day foot wraps will sell very well in Europe. In general, no matter how hard Vereshchagin tried to convince rich and wealthy peasants to take up the cheese business, no one wanted to go to his school. And then an interesting idea arose. It is not known who invented it, Vereshchagin himself or his partner in the plan, Vladimir Ivanovich Bladnov. (remember this character, he will later play an important role in the main plot of the article)
But they did the following. In the village of Koprino with a population of 800 people, they opened their own cheese factory, called this business a cheese-making artel and began to recruit staff for work. Bladnov and Vereshchagin set wage levels three or more times higher than the average income in the area. And naturally this immediately led to conflict. The wealthier peasants were outraged by the fact that the best workers and specialists began to leave them and be hired to work in the cheese-making artel. They gathered together and went to the artel with the newcomers to talk about the topic. They came and immediately, “Why are you luring our craftsmen to you? Let’s count such salaries?” and Bladnov or Vereshchagin answered them, “It’s a profitable business, that’s why we pay well, look for yourself, a bucket of milk is 50 kopecks.” , that makes five pounds of cheese. One pound of cheese is 50 kopecks – calculate the profit yourself.” The capitalist peasants knew how to count well, so they quickly began to think, “This is a good thing, but you will teach us how to make this cheese?”
“Of course we’ll teach you” answered Bladnov and Verishchagin “Welcome to our courses”
Eight years after the opening of the cheese-making artel and courses, Bladnov, using his own money, introduced additional classes in dairy science in a rural school. And among the general mass of rural children, he notices Sasha Chichkin, active and capable of learning. It is from this moment that Chichkin’s biography needs to be taught in the school curriculum. Because it is difficult to find or even come up with a more striking and illustrative example of how, thanks to perseverance and the desire for self-education, one can become one of the richest tycoons in the country. After graduating from school with honors, Chichkin, with Bladnova’s money, goes to Moscow, enters and completes a full course of study at the Moscow Real School, then enters the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy. He brilliantly completes his studies there, after which, with the same Bladnova’s money, he goes to Paris and studies for three years at the Pasteur Institute (French Institut Pasteur). After which he returns to Moscow to his sponsor and offers to marry his daughter. Whether it was a marriage of convenience or an agreement with Baldnov himself is unknown, although the version of a romantic relationship and great love between the young people should also not be rejected. What is known for sure is that Chichkin borrows a large sum from his father-in-law and with this money becomes his main competitor in the throne.
This was the commercial idea. Chichkin was quickly able to find an open market niche based on his experience living in Paris. Organized trade in milk and dairy products. Until that time, milk, cottage cheese and sour cream in Moscow were sold only in the markets of unpleasant-looking traders in unsanitary conditions. Organized stores sold only cheese and butter. Therefore, Chichkin opens the first large specialized store of milk and dairy products in the Russian Empire. And then the idea, to use commercial slang, went off with a bang. Spacious stores where all the staff wore white uniforms with caps on their heads. Not only the sales area, but also the interior spaces were decorated with snow-white tiles. Completely clean, sterile and no foul odors.
At first, Muscovites went to Chichkin’s store as if they were on an excursion, but gradually the level of service and quality of products made Chichkin a monopoly in the city. The success of his business was facilitated by competent marketing policies and advertising. Although, I think, in those days the concept of “marketing policy” did not exist, and people developed businesses based on their ingenuity or the experience they spied in Europe. So, the main slogan for their stores (the same newfangled word, then they said the motto), and so the motto became the expression “MILK OF THIS DAY” the phrase could be read in two ways, both in the form of expiration date and delivery time to the table. Therefore, every morning, the managers of Chichkin’s stores publicly, demonstratively and without any hesitation poured yesterday’s milk into the gutters or sewers. Imagine the shock of an urban citizen and a rural resident who came to the city to work at the sight of milk being poured into the sewer, and it was poured out in cans. It was then that rumors spread throughout the Russian land that Muscovites had gotten too greedy. And I think that Chichkin was discussed then in conservative and traditional Moscow more than the recent divorce of Petrosyan and Stepanenko.
And Chichkin constantly fueled this interest. There is no direct confirmation of this, but I assume that it was he who paid for all sorts of custom articles in the yellow press. Including stories about the relationship between son-in-law and father-in-law. The fact is that immediately after his son-in-law, his father-in-law Bladnov also began opening a chain of branded dairy stores. And the service in the stores was arranged in the same way as Chichkin’s, only the tiles in the stores were not white, but light blue. If Chichkin had young and energetic people working in his stores, then Bladnov’s staff was older and had a sedate demeanor. Chichkin’s signs were in a newfangled way without yats, but Bladnov’s were just like the good old days. And as publicists of that time noted, as soon as Chichkin’s store opened on one corner, a month later his father-in-law Bladnov’s store opened on the opposite corner of the street. What can we say about this? A brilliant move to monopolize the market. Thus, an artificial competitive environment was created, one focused on young and progressive Muscovites, the other on sedate citizens who respect old traditions.
To confirm his image, or maybe simply because he liked it, instead of exercising, Chichkin flew over Moscow every morning in his own airplane. To ensure the freshness of dairy products and prompt delivery, Alexander Vladimirovich was the first in Russia to create his own fleet of trucks. But most importantly, for the first time in the history of our country, he decided to conduct an experiment on motivating employees and introduced a multi-stage system of career elevators. Unfortunately, little information about his methods has survived to this day, mainly from newspaper publications; Chichkin himself did not write substantial works, like Henry Ford, on the topic of his school of management. What we know now? Chichkin tried to form work collectives in the same age category, rightly believing that people of the same age had the same interests, and therefore cohesion and understanding of the entire work collective would be easier to achieve.
Chichkin’s dairy empire grew by leaps and bounds. Shops opened in all major cities, milk processing and cheese production factories were built. With butter and cheese, Chichkin entered the European markets, and in the domestic market, demand only grew every year. Therefore, good, professional personnel and workers were needed. Chichkin developed and implemented a mentoring system and, most importantly, introduced lifelong employment. Just like in Japanese corporations, they began to do this about seventy years later. And about this, another legend has been preserved. At the end of the 80s of the last 20th century, one story was reprinted in the tabloid press, as always, without indicating the original source. It seems like some unknown Japanese flew to Moscow and was looking for Chichkin’s descendants. When asked “why does he need them,” the Japanese replied that he wanted to give one million dollars to the relatives of the man who invented the lifelong employment system. Since, according to him, the Japanese borrowed this system from the Russians. Well, what can I say? At the end of the 80s, under the pretext of openness and freedom of opinion, domestic newspapers also wrote something not so crazy.
Of course, Chichkin’s entire empire collapsed in the revolutionary year of 1918, was nationalized, and Chichkin himself had to flee to France. What can I say? Karma. The fact is that Chichkin supported the Bolsheviks, allocated money to them and even hid Molotov and other leaders of the Bolshevik party in his apartments. In general, the topic of financing the activities of the Bolshevik Party is very confusing. It is clear that the party could not conduct its activities on workers’ contributions alone, so some conscious bourgeois are mentioned who, not systematically, but gave out money for revolutionary activities. And here the question arises: why ? Enterprising people like Chichkin know the value of every penny, and one should not think that his tramp past forced him to take risks and noble donations. The fact is that many, many business people of domestic origin wanted, through the hands of revolutionaries, to squeeze out business from competitors of non-domestic origin. By the beginning of the 20th century, up to 80% of the entire mining and processing industry of the Russian Empire was in the hands of foreign investors. And the Bolsheviks initially advocated the nationalization of only foreign capital and assets. But then what happened was what happened.
Chichkin did not stay in exile for long; in 1922, at Semashko’s invitation, he returned to his homeland and, under the conditions of the NEP, opened his new dairy store in Moscow. Which, of course, will later be nationalized again, and Chichkin himself and his wife will be sent into exile to develop the steppes of Kazakhstan for the development of the dairy industry. He was not in exile for long; he was recalled under the patronage of Molotov. He then became an honored pensioner, periodically consulting with the government on the development of the dairy industry. Survived the Great Patriotic War. Alexander Vasilyevich Chichkin died in 1949 and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.
This is the story of one raised object. If you, dear readers, have had similar cases when a found item aroused interest and a desire to study the history associated with this item, write to us in the comments, and you can also send us a photo of an interesting find and we will try to study the history associated with this item and tell it to others readers in a light and ironic form, but at the same time observing all historical details. As always, I wish everyone good finds and good spirits.
