Ishym Merchants

Unlike other towns in Siberia and Ural, industry in Ishym had never reached great achievements. Over XVIII-XX centuries fair trade had been the main occupation of the population in Ishym. Thus merchants would deserve the status of an advanced class, who like nobility took an active part in public life. Some merchant families had been for a long time associated with trade marks and goods of quality so high that could hardly ever be found anywhere else. Apart from trade some merchants were known as public figures and philantropists.

The most known was the merchant of the first guild Nikolai Chernyakovski. In the XIXth century he gave up some of his houses for a town hospital and for a public college. He would set up various grants for municipal needs, for which he was not once awarded with state premiums and was given a title of the honourable philanthropist. Nikolay Chernyakovski would contact the advanced intelligentsia exiled to Ishym. In 1838 he gave shelter to the Decembrist Vladimir Steinghel, who cooperated with Chernyakovski in compiling and publishing ‘A Statistic description of the Ishym District’. After his death and under his will his assets were allocated to construction of the Nicolas church (1891), on which territory he was buried.