The Bugrovs were a Nizhny Novgorod merchant dynasty spanning three generations, active throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Old Believers of the fugitive-priest (beglopopovtsy) persuasion, they built one of the largest flour-milling and grain-trading enterprises in the Volga Region and left a lasting mark on both the architectural character and public life of Nizhny Novgorod.[2]

Founder of the dynasty: Pyotr Yegorovich Bugrov

The family patriarch, Pyotr Yegorovich Bugrov, came from the Trans-Volga side — from "sandy and marshy soil," as Vladimir Ivanovich Dal wrote of him in his sketch "Grandfather Bugrov." In his youth he was a burlak (barge hauler); along the wharves, among the burlak artels, he was known by the nickname "Petrakha the Balalaika Player" — for the balalaika that always lay in the sack on his back. His contemporaries noted that he would appear on the Volga even "before the larks arrived," as soon as the ice began to turn blue.[2]

In time, Pyotr Yegorovich traded the burlak's strap for more profitable work: he became a salt carrier, hauling sacks of salt onto barges, then became a boat owner himself, and later a contractor and grain merchant. In Dal's words, the elder Bugrov reasoned that it was "more profitable to work with one's mind than with one's back." He was noted for his conscientiousness and industry; the governor himself consulted him on business matters. By his own account, he continued to run his affairs not out of greed but because "about two thousand people feed themselves around him."[2]

Nikolay Aleksandrovich Bugrov

The most prominent member of the family was the founder's grandson, Nikolay Aleksandrovich Bugrov (1838–1911). He transformed the family business into one of the region's largest flour-milling enterprises: his mills processed up to 4,600 puds of grain per day. Nikolay Bugrov was called the "uncrowned king of Nizhny Novgorod" for his enormous influence in the city and the governorate. His father, Aleksandr Petrovich Bugrov, supplied felt footwear to Saint Petersburg, handled grain deliveries, and traded in timber; his image was immortalized by Pavel Melnikov-Pechersky in the novel In the Forests under the name P. M. Chapurin.[3][2]

In terms of his standing, he was a First Guild merchant, a manufaktur-sovetnik (commercial councillor), a deputy of the State Duma, of the Nizhny Novgorod provincial and district zemstvo assemblies, and an honorary and hereditary honorary citizen of Nizhny Novgorod. He was awarded four orders: the Order of St. Anna, second and third class; the Order of St. Stanislaus, third class; and the Order of St. Vladimir, fourth class. Nikolay Bugrov served as a deputy of the Nizhny Novgorod city duma for 32 years and sat on many of its commissions, including participating in the construction of a free municipal water supply system.[3][2]

Nikolay Bugrov headed the presidium of the Old Believers' congress and was one of the key figures of the Beglopovopts (fugitive-priest) agreement in the Nizhny Novgorod region. He presided over the 1st and 2nd All-Russian Congresses of the Beglopovopts (1908 and 1909, Nizhny Novgorod), and at the 3rd congress in 1910 was unanimously elected lifelong honorary chairman; the congresses adopted resolutions on the organization of communities, the search for a bishop, and the establishment of the "All-Russian Old Believer Brotherhood in the Name of St. Nicholas."[3][2] In 1907, when attempts were made to draw him into political games, he published a declaration in the Nizhegorodsky Listok newspaper in which he rejected any party affiliation and declared his opposition to violence "in whatever form and under whatever flag, red or white, it may manifest itself." In 1887, Nikolay Bugrov, together with the merchant Blinov, built and donated to the city a Widows' House with 165 apartments for the poorest widows with children up to the age of 12; the conditions of residence were chaste behavior and observance of fasts.[3] In 1883, Nikolay Bugrov completed the construction of the A. P. Bugrov Night Shelter, which had been begun by his father; in his youth, [3][2] Maxim Gorky lived in this shelter and many years later personally thanked Bugrov.

Architectural Heritage

The Bugrov family's buildings became part of the dense Historic Buildings of Rozhdestvenskaya Street — one of the most prominent urban thoroughfares of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Together with the houses of the Rukavishnikovs, the Blinovs, and other merchant families, they form a unified architectural ensemble reflecting the eclecticism and rationalist Art Nouveau of the era.[2]

Conflict with Gorky

Nikolay Bugrov's reputation was damaged by a sketch written by Maxim Gorky. Despite this, the memory of the merchant dynasty lived on in Nizhny Novgorod even after the business itself had perished: in the final years of his life, Nikolay Bugrov donated approximately 9,000 desyatinas of land to the peasants of several villages in the Nizhny Novgorod region, and also gave 1,000 square sazhens of land in the center of Nizhny Novgorod to the Nizhny Novgorod Old Believer community.[3] The figure of Nikolay Aleksandrovich Bugrov remained one of the symbols of the Nizhny Novgorod merchant class at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.[2]

Sources

  1. pravenc.ru — The father of Nikolay Aleksandrovich — Aleksandr Petrovich Bugrov — supplied felt footwear to Saint Petersburg, engaged in grain deliveries and timber trade, and enjoyed unconditional (archive)
  1. mapy.com
  2. miloserdie.ru — The Tycoon and the Stormy Petrel: how merchant Bugrov and writer Gorky fell out (archive)
Materials from the following articles were used (3)

In progress, Old Belief in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, Blinovs