Nikolay Aleksandrovich Bugrov (1839—1911) was the largest merchant of Nizhny Novgorod: a grain dealer, financier, landlord, patron of the arts, and philanthropist who gave 45% of his net income to charity. 


For all that, Bugrov the merchant
Was a shrewd and enterprising dealer;
Evenings, when he raged from sheer excess,
He never turned into a spendthrift,
He knew: his income was such
That he could neither drink it away nor eat it up,
No whim of his could ruin him,
And where did that income come from?
From those cubbyholes and corners
Where people lived on the sweat of their labor.
There the merchant had his catch
And his real hunting ground!
From there he raked in his profits,
From there the copper pennies
Flowed into the merchant's backwaters
And turned into millions,
No longer of pennies, but of rubles,
The merchant's sure-fire gains.
It was the poor folk, living in no paradise,
Who enriched the hulking merchant,
Thereby turning money into power,
Into someone else's power, not their own.

Demyan Bedny

"A millionaire, a major grain trader, the owner of steam mills, a dozen steamships, a flotilla of barges, and enormous forests, N. A. Bugrov played the role of an appanage prince in Nizhny and the governorate. An Old Believer of the "priestless persuasion," he built a vast cemetery in the fields, a verst from Nizhny, enclosed by a high brick wall, with a church and a "skit" (hermitage) on it, while peasants were punished with a year in prison under Article 103 of the "Code of Criminal Punishments" for setting up secret "prayer rooms" in their own izbas. In the village of Popovka, Bugrov erected an enormous building, an almshouse for Old Believers; it was widely known that sectarian "nachetchiki" (scripture scholars) were being trained in this almshouse. He openly supported secret sectarian hermitages in the forests of the Kerzhenets and on the Irgiz, and in general was not only an active defender of sectarianism but also a firm pillar on which the "ancient piety" of the Volga Region, the Cis-Urals, and even some parts of Siberia rested.

The head of the state church, the nihilist and cynic Konstantin Pobedonostsev, wrote a report to the tsar, I think in 1901, about Bugrov's hostile, anti-church activity, but this did not stop the millionaire from stubbornly going about his business. He addressed the capricious Governor Baranov with the informal "ty," and I saw him, in '96, at the All-Russian Exhibition, slapping Witte amicably on the belly and, stamping his foot, shouting at the Minister of the Court, Vorontsov. He was a generous philanthropist: he built a fine flophouse in Nizhny, an enormous building with 300 apartments for widows and orphans, equipped a school in it superbly, set up the city waterworks, built and gave the city the building for the City Duma, made gifts of timber to the zemstvo for rural schools, and in general spared no money on works of "benevolence." "

Maxim Gorky



As early as the 1880s, the Bugrovs, father Aleksandr Petrovich and son Nikolay Aleksandrovich, built at their own expense a flophouse for 840 people. The initiator of the construction was Aleksandr Petrovich Bugrov: in the minutes of the Nizhny Novgorod City Duma session of May 2, 1880, he proposed allocating a plot at the Lower Bazaar, taking upon himself all the costs of erecting a building for 500 people; formally the house was designed for 450 men and 50 women, but in practice it took in up to 1,200 people, including children.[1] The flophouse was built in 1883 to a design by the architect F. N. Falin and was located at 2 Rozhdestvenskaya Street (Narodnogo Edinstva Square); the three-story stone building is an architectural monument.[1] They also built a widows' house for 160 widows with children, and took part in building the city waterworks.

In memory of this, the "Benefactors' Fountain" was erected on Sofronovskaya Square with the inscription: "This fountain was built in memory of the honorary citizens of the city of Nizhny Novgorod: F. A., A. A., N. A. Blinov, A. P. and N. A. Bugrov, and U. S. Kurbatov, whose donations enabled the city to build a waterworks in 1880, on the condition that the residents of Nizhny Novgorod may use it free of charge forever."



The prudent N. A. Bugrov did not make a habit of donating cash sums to charity; its funds came both from income on real estate and from interest on a "perpetual" deposit. The houses and estates that Bugrov owned in Nizhny Novgorod served more than his own personal interests. The income from the property that he gave to the city was directed toward helping the destitute and needy. Thus, in 1884 Bugrov donated to the city an estate on Gruzinskaya Street and a capital sum of 40,000 rubles for the construction of a public building that would bring in an annual income of no less than 2,000 rubles. This money was intended "annually, for all time, as aid to the fire victims of Semyonov Uyezd."


Bugrov used the same principle in financing the famous Widows' House, opened in Nizhny in 1887. Besides the interest on a large capital sum (65,000 rubles) held in the Nikolaevsky Bank, the shelter's budget was supplemented by income (2,000 rubles a year) from two of Bugrov's houses, on Alekseevskaya Street and Gruzinsky Lane, which the merchant gave to the city. The lodging shelter was managed by the City Duma, which elected three trustees every three years; wardens kept order inside the building, with a woman warden in the women's section, and the trustees submitted an annual report on the shelter's work and a budget estimate for the following year.[1] In 1885 Nikolay Aleksandrovich Bugrov donated 30,000 rubles to build a commercial building between the chapel and Komarov's house at the foot of the Zelensky Descent, so that rental income from the commercial premises would cover the upkeep of the lodging house without burdening the city budget; he later expressed his readiness to add another 10,000 rubles, including construction materials worth 6,000 rubles.[1] Following a submission by Governor N. M. Baranov dated January 30, 1888, the Highest Imperial permission was granted to give the Widows' House the name "Nizhny Novgorod Municipal Public Widows' House of the Blinovs and Bugrovs."

N. A. Bugrov's aid to the starving during the calamitous years of 1891–1892 looks large-scale and striking, especially against the background of a general, often perfunctory, approach. He agreed to sell the provincial Food Commission all the grain he had purchased at the procurement price of 1 ruble 28 kopecks per pood, that is, giving up profit entirely (at the time, Nizhny Novgorod landowners were holding grain prices at 1 ruble 60 kopecks).

The Bugrovs paid special attention to the education of talented children. In particular, a scholarship was established in the town of Semyonov for "a peasant boy with outstanding abilities"; the first to receive it, in 1912, was Nikolay Vorobyov, a pupil from the village of Khakhaly *

"'Give me power,' he would say, narrowing his good eye to the thinness of a knife blade, 'and I'd stir up the whole people, the Germans and the English would gasp! I'd hand out crosses and medals for work, to carpenters, machinists, working people, common folk. You've succeeded at your trade, so here's honor and glory for you! Keep competing. And if, in the process, you stepped on somebody's head, that's nothing! We don't live in a desert, you can't get through without a shove! When we've lifted the whole land and pushed it into work, then life will be roomier. We have good people, with such people you can overturn mountains, plow up the Caucasus. Only one thing must be remembered: you wouldn't lead your own son to a loose woman in the hour of his flesh's summons, would you? Well, neither can you plunge the people headlong into our bustle all at once; they'll choke, they'll suffocate in our acrid smoke! One must be careful.'" Maxim Gorky, "N. A. Bugrov"



http://community.livejournal.com/foto_history/638009.html

Sources

  1. nino52.ru — History of the Bugrov Shelter in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
  2. autotravel-nn.ru — The Bugrov Entrepreneurs of Nizhny Novgorod (archive)