The Merchants and Cultural Life in Tyumen

Over the XIXth and the beginning of the XXth centuries the merchants were regarded as the most advanced class, and were directly involved into social life. Among the merchants there often appeared maecenats and philanthrops who clearly understood the necessity of education and enlightenment in the native town.

The merchant Andrei Tekutjev stood at the cradle of the first professional theatre in Tyumen. On his means, in 1892 a building for the theatre was constructed, and soon the plays by Ostrovski, Gogol, and Gorki were staged here. Due to the efforts of the philantropist merchant Nikolai Chukmaldin, the inhabitants of Tyumen could see the paintings by the remarkable artist Ivan Kalganov. Chukmaldin took an active part in organizing the first museum in Tyumen. He initiated a Salesmen’s Club, where musical parties were held regularly. Chukmaldin’s memoirs survived until today can provide a lot of precious witness of life in Tyumen in the second half of the XIXth century.

Life of the Tyumen merchants got deeply intermingled with the history of Russian culture, sometimes in a most curious way. Yong Michail Prishvin, a future famous writer, after having been expelled from the gymnasium, was sent to his uncle I. Ignatov, a merchant and an owner of the shipbuilding plant. A future writer went to the Tyumen Alexandrovsk vocational college. The prominent Siberian scientist Ivan Slovtsov was Director of the college at that time. Later on, Michail Prishvin gave detailed portraits of both Slovtsov and Ignatov in his novel ‘Kashei’s chain’
( * Kashei is an evil wizard from the Russian folklore).