Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ment, patience in military matters, and constant
study. This treatise became a basic manual for all
imperial commanders, and later for Soviet mili-
tary commanders. At the moment of his greatest
glory, having been promoted to the unprece-
dented rank of generalissimo, in January 1800
Suvorov found himself recalled to St. Petersburg
in disgrace. Accused of a petty misdemeanor, he
was banned from the imperial court and died a
few months later. Although
ALEXANDER I
erected
a statue in his memory, the cult of Suvorov that
developed in the 19th century had certain anti-
czarist connotations, given how Suvorov's career
had ended. During World War II the Supreme
Soviet established the Suvorov medal as the
highest military decoration for gallantry in com-
bat, and the cadet academy bears his name.
million of these yearly. In 1883, he founded I. D.
Sytin and Company, a publisher that specialized
in large print runs of cheap editions of Russian
and foreign classics. The following year he
started a successful partnership with Lev
TOLTSOY
and the Posrednik publishing house. Over the
next years, they published over 250 titles with
an emphasis on moral and spiritual literature,
with Tolstoy penning 44 of them. By the 1890s,
Sytin had become one of the most important
Russian publishers. In the first decades of the
20th century he published various well-received
encyclopedias, including the 14-volume
Popular
Encyclopedia
(1911-12), a 10-volume
Children's
Encyclopedia
(1913-14), and a
Military Encyclope-
dia
(1911-15) that had reached 18 volumes
before the army ordered the suspension of its
publication in the climate of military censorship
that accompanied the outbreak of World War I.
Sytin also published the popular magazine
Vokrug sveta
(
Around the World
) and the mass
newspaper
Russkoe slovo
(
The Russian Word
), with
a circulation of 1 million. His efforts to promote
cultural literacy among the masses earned him
the opposition of reactionary groups like the
BLACK HUNDREDS
, who were responsible for acts
of vandalism against his enterprises. By 1914,
Sytin had bookshops in over 60 Russian cities,
and his two Moscow printing plants were
responsible for 25 percent of Russia's book pro-
duction. After the revolution the
BOLSHEVIKS
nationalized his presses, but he agreed to work
as a consultant for the State Publishing House
(Gosizdat) until his retirement in 1928. How-
ever, he refused
LENIN
's offer to become its direc-
tor, citing his lack of formal education.
Sytin, Ivan Dmitrievich
(1851-1934)
publisher
One of the major Russian publishers of the late
imperial period, Sytin was born in Kostroma
province, the son of a rural clerk who gave him
little formal education. In a remarkable career,
he became a multimillionaire while distributing
popular education materials of generally high
quality at minimum prices. After moving to
MOSCOW
in 1863, he worked in several book-
shops before opening his first typography in
1876. From the beginning he was interested in
publishing for a mass readership, starting with
lubki
(folk prints), before moving to cheap books
for rural readers and the highly successful line of
attractively illustrated calendars featuring prac-
tical information. By 1912 he was publishing 12
Search WWH ::
Custom Search