Ulyanov Ilya Nikolaevich biography. Zh. Trofimov, Zh. Mindubaev Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov. On guard of the public interest

"For excellent, diligent service" Ulyanov was awarded the Order of St. Stanislav 1stdegree, St. Anne 2nd degree, St. Vladimir3rd degree, and also received hereditary nobility.

Materials provided by the Penza Regional Library named after M. Yu. Lermontov.

Zh. Trofimov, Zh. Mindubaev

Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov

Years of study

Astrakhan tradesman's son

In the distant years of the beginning of the last century, Astrakhan residents went to Gostiny Dvor for news. There, in the gloomy coolness of the arches, in the midst of the crowd, one could learn everything and about everything. So it was in 1831. There was enough news. In Russia, the tsar pacified cholera riots. In Warsaw, the Poles fought for independence. Military settlers rioted in the Novgorod province. Knocking among the people, listening in both ears, the Astrakhan shook his mustache: the world is restless.

But at home, thank God, there were no special passions. A dilapidated wall in the White City collapsed. Two drowned men were washed up on a sandbar at Strelka. There was a fire in the Village.

The rest is trifle. The obsolete were buried in the cemetery, the guilty were whipped in the police yard, newborns were baptized in churches.

Life took its course.

On July 19, 1831, in the church of St. Nicholas Gostiny, Priest Nikolai Livanov baptized the second son of the Astrakhan tailor Nikolai Ulyanov. In the metric book, the church deacon wrote down who was baptized: "... the Astrakhan tradesman Nikolai Vasilyevich Ulyanin and his lawful wife Anna Alekseevna, the son of Elijah."

The surname Ulyanova was written in those years in different ways: Ulyanin, Ulyaninov, Ulyanov. This recording begins the documentary recording of the life of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov. The deacon indicated the date of baptism. And he was born on July 14 (26), 1831.

The Ulyanov family came from the Volga, from the great Russian river, whose name has always been associated in the minds of the people with will, with a better life, with hopes for happiness. The genealogy of the family is rooted in the deep folk strata, from time immemorial living by the labor of their hands.

The father of Ilya Nikolaevich, a serf, came from the Nizhny Novgorod province to the lower reaches of the Volga in 1791. Twenty-two-year-old Nikolai Vasilyevich Ulyanov was released by the landowner Brekhov from his native village of Androsov for quitrent.

At the end of the 18th century, too many fugitive and quitrent ("entered") peasants accumulated in the Astrakhan province. Most of them had no desire to return to their masters. The administration of the region, at the request of the landowners, searched for and sent back the fugitives and those who "entered", but they went to all sorts of tricks, just not to go back.

“During the audit, many of the vile ones appeared in Astrakhan, declaring themselves that they did not know their landowners, nor where they were born, whom they were ordered to expel by decree on the audit,” Empress Catherine II wrote to Astrakhan, “and these vile people, according to the habit of living around Astrakhan, from that expulsion they flee to Persia and there they become infidels.

The lower reaches of the Volga had to be settled, developed. People were needed. Trying to keep the people from escaping, the empress issues a decree: “Those vile ones who will be detained will be beaten mercilessly with batogs from three times, and which of them will confess, those will be sent to their landlords, and those who will be confirmed in their approval from the third time, those will be attributed leave to state estates and fisheries.

Beating didn't help. Almost all "newcomers" remained in the new place. Including the father of Ilya Nikolaevich. By decree of the zemstvo court, he was ranked from 1797 in the "Astrakhan old society." And this meant - goodbye, landowner, goodbye, slavery! From now on, he is a "state" peasant. And although now there is no return back to their native lands, but freedom lies ahead!

He settled on the banks of the Volga, forty-seven versts above Astrakhan, in the village of Novopavlovsky. The headman conscientiously wrote down the signs of the newcomer in the accounting sheet: “The growth of two arshins is 5 inches; the hair on the head, the mustache and beard are light blond, the face is white, clean, brown eyes ... "

But it was not possible to become a peasant here, and it was difficult to feed on “handicraft tailoring” in a sparsely populated poor village. In 1808, Nikolai Ulyanov moved to the city and after much trouble, by decree of the Astrakhan Treasury, he was ranked among the bourgeois class. Soon he was accepted into the workshop of tailors and dyers of the craft council. There he began to work, without straightening his back, from dawn to dusk, conscientiously fulfilling strict rules, which read: “To do excellent and durable work and to send the master’s position regularly and hastily ...”

A measured life has gone.

In 1812, Nikolai Vasilyevich married the daughter of a poor Astrakhan tradesman, Anna Alekseevna Smirnova.

He got his own house on Cossack Street - almost at the place where the camp of Stepan Razin once stood, returning from the Persian campaign.

In this house, his son Ilya was born - the fourth child in the family.

house on the spit

The grassroots city is a commercial city. Facade of Astrakhan - marinas and storehouses, moorings and customs, warehouses and bazaars.

At the beginning of the 18th century, barges and barges were unloaded on the Kutum River, and the fleet hid here from the stray waves of the Volga. The cartographer of 1701 explained in the drawing: “Embankment street along the Kutumova River with marinas for the sale of vital supplies imported from riding cities and moorings that should be protected from flooding by a wooden stump and an earthen embankment ...” At the end of the street there was an “area for drawing water”, and on Strelka, not far from the Kremlin, there is an Edible Market.

At that time, the walls of the Kremlin, built on the Hare Hillock at the confluence of two Volga channels, looked at the Volga expanse. But year after year, the sand washed up and washed up to the walls of square Tatar brick, the strip of land separating the fortress from the river became wider and wider. At the beginning of the 19th century, the first buildings began to be erected on it. Taverns, shops, live-fish cages, warehouses and salt exchanges settled here. And this entire area of ​​the city began to be called Kosa - in memory of the narrow sandy strip that once lay here.

The place is dashing, lively. A heap of taverns and inns, bunkhouses and shops, craft establishments and warehouses. Built and settled in this part of the city and working people - loaders, sailors, coopers, painters, weavers, carpenters, peddlers, scribes, cutters, tinkers, cabmen, "Kalmyk tea brewers" and "sieves of flour masters".

Every people lived here.

“The spit is an ebullient corner of Astrakhan, full of features in every respect, including sanitary. On Kos, the horrors of poverty, shame, misfortune and the delights of wealth, happiness, glory live side by side; hunger and gluttony, rags and velvet, silk, lace. On Kos, next to the suffering of those exhausted by the struggle for existence, champagne is pouring. To maintain order on Kos, a very solid police force is required. To give lodging for the night to the homeless inhabitants of the Spit, even five city lodging houses are not enough, and there are only two of them in Astrakhan. In one cheap canteen you will not feed all the hungry from the Spit. Patients from the Spit can overwhelm all city medical institutions ... ”So the writer of Astrakhan testified.

Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov (July 14 (26), 1831, Astrakhan - January 12 (24), 1886, Simbirsk), father of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, came from the townspeople of Astrakhan, lost his father at the age of 1 year and was raised by his older brother, Vasily Nikolayevich, who himself ardently wanted to study, but failed: after the death of his father, he had to enter the service in order to support his family.

But everything that he could not achieve on his own, he decided to give to his younger brother, whom he kept in the gymnasium and then sent to the university.

Ilya Nikolaevich spoke about the children with a feeling of deep gratitude for his brother. Consciousness of the need for education for everyone, intensified work on oneself to achieve it, an almost reverent attitude towards science distinguished Ilya Nikolayevich all his life and were inspired by children from childhood.

Brought up in difficult conditions, taking lessons early in order to support himself and not hang on his brother’s neck, Ilya Nikolayevich was distinguished all his life by a strict sense of duty, great diligence in work, which he demanded steadily from himself and from others, first of all, of course, from their children. He himself directed the elders at the beginning of their teaching, demanding from them the strict fulfillment of their duties; taught them to work. Among other things, he expressed his fear that his son Vladimir would not develop the habit of working, because everything was too easy for him; therefore, on the development of working capacity: with Vladimir, he pressed especially hard.

He himself was extremely modest in his personal assessment, doing all his great and initiative work for granted - nothing more, Ilya Nikolayevich was against "praise", as he expressed it, and thus a useful corrective was created at home for the constant praise of Vladimir Ilyich at school.

The personal example of the father was, as always happens in education, even more important.

A huge factor in the upbringing was that the father was not an official, like the vast majority of employees of that time, but an ideological worker who spared no effort and effort to fight for his ideals.

Children, not seeing him often for weeks during his travels, learned early to understand that business is something higher, to which everything is sacrificed. His lively stories about the successes of construction in his work, about the new schools that arose in the villages, about the struggle that it cost - both with the top: those in power, the landowners, - and with the bottom: the darkness and prejudices of the masses - were vividly absorbed by the children.

I especially remember his joy, manifested every time a peasant gathering decided to open a school or expressed satisfaction with the existing one.

The first conscious aspiration of his eldest daughter was to become a village teacher.

In 1863, Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov married Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova (Blank).

According to his convictions, Ilya Nikolaevich was what was defined by the words: a peaceful populist.

Having taken the post of inspector of public schools in the Simbirsk province, he set about organizing a new difficult business.

In his youth, he copied some of his unresolved poems, and even in his childhood, his eldest son noted those in which civic motives predominated, such as: “The Song of Yeremushka”, “Reflections at the Front Door”.

In walks through the village fields and forests, he sang to the children forbidden student songs of his time. As the memories of his students say, he was a very sensitive teacher.

Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov died while in the service in January 1886 from a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 55.

He was buried at the cemetery of the Intercession Monastery in Simbirsk.

Father Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov-Lenin can be safely called an extraordinary personality. Thanks to enviable abilities, noble aspirations, honest work and perseverance, Ilya Nikolayevich achieved great success, awards and titles. He was a kind family man and a true professional in his field. Lenin's father rose to the position of director of public schools in the Simbirsk province, became a real state councilor, which gave him the right to a noble title, although he was an Astrakhan tradesman by birth. However, historians are still arguing about the origin of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov. In his genealogy, according to different versions, there are Kalmyk and Chuvash roots.

Champion of public education

On July 14 (26 - according to the new style) July 1831 in Astrakhan, the son Ilya was born in the family of the tailor Nikolai Vasilievich Ulyanin and his wife Anna Alekseevna. The father soon changed the ending of his last name, and the boy was recorded in the documents as Ulyanov.

Ilya grew up as the youngest child in the family. Brother Vasily was 12 years older than him, sisters Maria and Fedosya - 10 and 8 years respectively.

Since the father of this family died five years after the birth of his youngest son, his brother Vasily, who was then only 17 years old, took over the upbringing and education of Ilya.

The boy's extraordinary abilities for science manifested themselves quite early. Ilya Ulyanov was released from the Astrakhan gymnasium with a silver medal. In 1854, after graduating from Kazan University, he received a PhD in mathematics. [S-BLOCK]

The young specialist began working as a teacher in Penza. At the age of 32, he married 28-year-old Maria Alexandrovna Blank and transferred to the Nizhny Novgorod Men's Gymnasium as a senior teacher of mathematics and physics. This 1863 was a truly turning point in his life.

The successes of Ilya Ulyanov were noticed by the leadership, and after three years the teacher received the position of an official - he was appointed inspector of public schools in the Simbirsk province (now it is the Ulyanovsk region). And in 1874 he received the post of director of public schools.

Ilya Nikolaevich controlled the activities of zemstvo schools, parish, city and county schools. His duties included the opening of new educational institutions, the selection of good teachers, the solution of administrative and economic issues, and the promotion of universal education. Lenin's father especially advocated equal rights to education for all children, regardless of their nationality.

Thanks to the efforts of Ilya Ulyanov, the expenditures of local budgets for education from 1869 to 1886 in the Simbirsk province increased 15 (!) times. During this time, more than 150 new schools were built in the region, and the number of students increased from 10 to 20 thousand. The quality of education has also improved.

Ilya Nikolaevich received the title of real state councilor in 1877, and shortly before his death he was awarded the Order of St. Stanislav, I degree. Ulyanov died on January 12 (24), 1886 in Simbirsk from a cerebral hemorrhage, having lived less than 55 years.

According to some historians, the wife of a real state councilor, Maria Alexandrovna, was Jewish on her father's side, and had German-Swedish roots on her mother's side. Eight children were born in the family of Father Lenin, two of whom died in infancy.

Was he a Chuvash?

Some historians believe that Nikolai Vasilievich Ulyanin - the father of Ilya Nikolaevich - was a Chuvash by nationality. According to archival data, the Astrakhan Zemstvo Court in 1798 approved the list of peasants who arrived in the Lower Volga region. N. V. Ulyanin is also listed there, who was previously a serf of the landowner Stepan Brekhov from the village of Androsovo, Sergachsky district, Nizhny Novgorod province. According to the Zemstvo court document, Lenin's grandfather left his native place and moved to Astrakhan in 1791.

In the book “Lenin's Dossier without retouching. Documentation. Facts. Evidence”, the Russian historian Akim Arutyunov writes that the area of ​​the Nizhny Novgorod village of Androsovo at that time was inhabited by the Chuvash. And there were practically no representatives of Russian nationality among the peasants.

However, direct evidence of the Chuvash origin of Nikolai Vasilyevich Ulyanin has not been preserved. But the fact that Lenin's paternal ancestors were Orthodox Christians is an established fact. [S-BLOCK]

At the end of the 18th century, many serfs fled to the Lower Volga region from their landowners. And since these lands needed to be settled, the authorities did not return the fugitives to their former owners. Lenin's grandfather also went on the run. In a new place, he began working as a tailor, and in 1808 he received the official status of a tradesman, which was confirmed by a decree of the Astrakhan State Chamber.

The surname Ulyanin, formed from a female name, testifies to belonging to the peasant class. Such surnames were often given to the children of yard girls when the father could not, for example, officially register the child as himself. Therefore, Nikolai Vasilyevich preferred the surname Ulyanov, more befitting to the bourgeois class.

It is interesting that the description of the appearance of Lenin's paternal grandfather was preserved in the documents. The Astrakhan Zemstvo Court, in an order dated 1799, indicated that Nikolai Vasilyevich was about 164 cm tall, his face was white, his eyes were brown, his hair, mustache and beard were light blond.

Kalmyk roots

The main source of information about Lenin's Kalmyk roots is the writer Marietta Shaginyan. Her book "The Ulyanov Family", published in 1938, caused sharp criticism from the party leadership. The communists accused the writer of distorting the facts, since, in their opinion, any statements that the appearance of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who is the pride of the Russian people, has the features of a representative of the Mongoloid race, have an ideologically hostile sound.

Marietta Shaginyan wrote that in the Astrakhan archive she found a document indicating that Anna Alekseevna (mother of Ilya Ulyanov) was a baptized Kalmyk, her father, the Astrakhan tradesman Alexei Lukyanovich Smirnov, was a baptized Kalmyk, and her mother was Russian (presumably). The writer complained that the archive staff did not allow her to make a copy of this document. As indirect evidence of Lenin's Kalmyk origin, she pointed to his narrow brown eyes and the Asian line of cheekbones, inherited by the leader of the world revolution from his paternal grandmother.

It is known that the Smirnov family was prosperous and respected in the city. Alexey Lukyanovich held the post of the petty-bourgeois headman of Astrakhan, had a solid house and many servants. [S-BLOCK]

According to one source, 23-year-old Anna Alekseevna Smirnova married 53-year-old Nikolai Vasilyevich Ulyanin in 1923. However, in the Revision Tale (a kind of population census) for 1816, they are already mentioned as spouses. It also states that their first-born Alexander died at the age of four months in 1812. This means that the parents of Ilya Ulyanov could get married in 1811 or at the beginning of 1812, and at the time of the wedding, Nikolai Vasilyevich was 43 years old, and Anna Alekseevna was 24. The couple lived quite safely in a two-story house in the center of Astrakhan. The building now houses the Museum of the City's History. On the first floor of the house, the tailor Nikolai Vasilyevich received clients, and on the second floor there were living rooms.

As for the Kalmyk origin of Lenin, Astrakhan, as you know, is a multinational city. Russians began to arrive in the Lower Volga region in the 16th century, and these lands at that time were inhabited mainly by Nogais and Kalmyks. Some of them converted to Christianity. So Lenin's great-grandfather could have been a Kalmyk.

Some researchers argue that Ilya Nikolayevich defended equal rights to education for children of all nationalities because he himself considered himself a member of national minorities. Personally, the education he received helped him make a career, and he hoped that it would help others to reach the people.