Furniture Factory 8 March

History

2014: Attempted theft of assets from Kravchenko's sister at Comfort LLC

In July 2014, the business of a millionaire, philanthropist and head of the largest furniture holding "March 8" Mikhail Kravchenko after his death shake scandals. The Investigative Committee opened a new criminal case against unidentified persons from the founders of Comfort LLC, which in Kravchenko's holding was engaged in the production of elite furniture. The value of the asset, according to protection estimates, is 500 million rubles. Unknown founders are suspected of illegally amending the register of legal entities (Article 170.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), which led to the conclusion of Kravchenko's representative from the founders of Comfort LLC and the actual seizure of his business. Representatives of the Kravchenko family are dissatisfied with this state of affairs and demand that the investigation re-qualify the charge for Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Fraud on an especially large scale").

Comfort was engaged in the production of upmarket upmarket furniture Albert & Stein. Until Kravchenko's death, the company was owned by his sister Olga Talanova and former business partner Olga Otarashvili. The first owned 90% of the authorized capital, the second - 10%. The total value of assets on the balance sheet of Comfort, according to the estimates of lawyer Karen Nersisyan, representing the interests of the Kravchenko family, is approaching half a billion rubles. We are talking about production facilities located in Moscow in a wood-spraying workshop with an area of ​ ​ 1.4 thousand square meters. m. At Staropetrovsky proezd, 11 p. 3.

- It is necessary to explain that Olga Talanova was only the nominal owner of this asset, - Nersisyan told Izvestia. - Kravchenko himself was engaged in all economic and financial activities.

On May 22, 2012, Kravchenko was shot dead near his house in the village of Peredelkino. Nine days after that, someone brought documents to the Federal Tax Service 46 in Moscow to re-register one of the large assets of the "furniture king" - Comfort LLC, which produces frames for upholstered furniture.

- An unidentified person on June 6, 2012 submitted to the Ministry of Finance of Russia No. 46 a statement on amending the Unified State Register of Legal Entities on the composition of the participants of Comfort LLC, the minutes of the general meeting of participants, statements of shareholders and acts of sale of shares by other shareholders, sources in the Investigative Committee told Izvestia. - According to the expert's conclusion, Talanova's signatures turned out to be fake.

A criminal case was opened under Part 1 of Art. 170.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Falsification of the unified state register of legal entities") at the request of Olga Talanova, who discovered that she no longer owns a single ruble in the authorized capital, and a certain Nadezhda Vlaskina is listed as the sole owner of an expensive asset.

Talanova's defense is sure that Kravchenko's partner could redo the charter and forge all these documents.

• Olga Otarashvili had access to all documents and seals and had every opportunity to forge documents, lawyer Karen Nersisyan told Izvestia.

The defense also insists on retraining the prosecution for a more serious part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code, since it believes that the assets were stolen in this way.

Otarashvili herself rejects all claims against her. As Izvestia found out, during the investigation, Otarashvili stated that she only signed the papers at the request of Kravchenko and did not know who had changed the constituent documents: according to her, she did not even know where the seals and stamps of society were.

"In fact, I was the nominal director of Comfort LLC," Otarashvili told the investigator at the confrontation. - At Kravchenko's request I signed financial and economic documents of the company, which were brought to my house or I came to sign them for production.<...> Where the financial and economic documents of the company were stored, I do not know for certain. Where<...> the stamps and seals of Comfort LLC are stored<...>, I do not know. After the death of Kravchenko, the stamps and seals of Comfort LLC were not used by me, "says Otarashvili's interrogation protocols^[1] after^[1]

As of July 2014, the Moscow company Furniture Manufactory Tsekh LLC, which is controlled by Kravchenko's legal heirs, is engaged in the production of furniture under the Albert & Stein brand. According to SPARK, its general director is Denis Shcherbakov, co-owners are Shcherbakov and Talanova. Izvestia contacted the manufacturer and found out: the last time Otarashvili was in their field of vision in 2013.

- Our company in 2013 bought from Otarashvili and Comfort LLC the rights to use this brand and make furniture of this brand, - told Izvestia in the company "Shop." - We do not maintain contacts with Mrs. Otarashvili.

2013: The Albert & Stein brand is bought out by Teche

In 2013, Teche Furniture Manufactory LLC bought from Otarashvili and Comfort LLC the rights to use the Albert & Stein brand and make furniture of this brand. The company is controlled by Kravchenko's legal heirs. According to SPARK, its general director is Denis Shcherbakov, co-owners are Shcherbakov and Talanova.

2012: The Murder of Mikhail Kravchenko

On May 22, 2012, Kravchenko was shot dead near his house in the village of Peredelkino. In July 2014, it was reported that the criminal case of Kravchenko's murder was opened and transferred to the prosecutor's office. Two alleged perpetrators of the murder and the alleged organizer, former business partner of Kravchenko Alexei Pronin, will go to the dock.

1996: Mikhail Kravchenko launches modern furniture production

In 1996, Mikhail Kravchenko, an enthusiast of modern furniture production in Moscow, created the first furniture production of the modern Western European type, which immediately began to produce soft furniture typical of countries such as Italy, Germany and France.

The bet on high-quality selection of raw materials, careful assembly, alignment of design allows the Factory's products to be presented in private elite housing, hotels 4-5 *, important state institutions and representative premises. Production base

From the first steps, the management of the Factory set itself the task of creating an enterprise that is as close as possible in its production and management characteristics to the leading companies in Europe and the United States. To this end, together with companies such as Doimo (Italy), Steinhoff (Germany), Laz-Z-Boy (USA), Multiyork (England) and many others, a lot of analytical work was carried out, which made it possible to introduce the most modern principles of organization of production and management.

In addition, on the recommendations of foreign colleagues, Factory purchased the best equipment presented in foreign markets.

1994: Restoration of the Factory's History

In 1994, one of the designers of the factory brought a book to Moscow from Milan, from the annual furniture salon held there. Yes, not simple, but terribly informative - History of European Furniture & Review of Historically Recognized Manufacturers. Lе Roix & Clyde. Glasgow.

The designer brought this book, naturally with intent. As old-fashioned writers used to say, "what was the surprise of all those gathered..."

So here; "what was the surprise of all the assembled" shareholders when, in the Russian Producers section, they saw a painfully native oval logo on an old factory building. The caption under the picture was even more native, despite the difference in languages: Moscow 8th of March Furn. Plant. Founded by Seriogin.

Of course, not everything has sunk into trenchless oblivion. They knew, of course, something in the factory and about Seregin, something was heard about the series that Moritz Moon was trying to launch. Yes, everything was somehow a misfortune to deal with your own history.

But here the story came out completely close to reality. The book revealed not only advertisements for Sereginsky enterprises, but also a lot of documentation intended for specialists. For example, one of the drawings of the same corner "Two-headed Eagle," some technological instructions and much more.

The factory began what is called "its own investigation." So they learned about a special Seregin beech, about the requirements for it, about processing methods. Contacted relatives of Seregins in the United States. Checked just in case those very American furniture bolts from Ohio. We checked and found out - the company that sold them to Seregin is still alive now, and now makes a furniture bracket with special coating, superior to all previously known products of this kind at the factory. They signed a contract and again began to buy components and professional tools in America.

And the shadow of the former owner seemed to continue to hover over the factory, bringing his old acquaintances, opening the pages of documents. Then it turned out where the name "Factory of the 8th March" really came from.

Naturally, not everything remained in its place. One of the former supplier companies changed the business in a hundred years, someone disappeared altogether. Naturally, the furniture world itself and those who work for it have changed. It is clear that it made no sense to collect all Seregin's suppliers. By the mid-nineties, the factory was already actively working with the West.

And yet, for the new time and for understanding what kind of person Frol Seregin was, how his factory worked, what helped and what prevented her in this work, countless records of Seregin, notes on drawings, orders and telegrams saved in the American family archive turned out to be useful.

1941: Evacuation of the factory to the Urals

Until 1957, the history of the Seregin factory changed dramatically several times. An unexpected and large pre-war order for leather sofas for district prosecutors was suddenly replaced by an order for seats for "one and a half." At the beginning of the war, the factory was evacuated to a small town on the coast of Balkhash, then to the Urals.

The return of production to Moscow took place in stages. After the war, part of the workshops were placed in Moldova, something else remained on Balkhash, something in the Urals. In Moscow, only the assembly of the so-called "Czech" sofas was established, supplied in parts from all these places. Therefore, the old official name, preserved by the supplier workshops, in Moscow was transformed simply into "Assembly Furniture Enterprise No. 8."

It was not a "letterbox," as dissidents and various military attachés thought for a long time. The number 8 remained with the assembly company from the old name and did not carry any secrecy in itself, except for the half-forgotten history of the Seregin manufactory.

The real return to Moscow of all production, as well as the return of the name "Furniture Factory March 8," were provoked by the collapse of the Union and the destruction of communication with suppliers.

The corporatized enterprise was forced to start all over again. New suppliers appeared, workshops started working, sales salons began to develop in Moscow, and then throughout Russia.

And then this happened...

Mid-1920s: Return to Russia, mattress boom

In the mid-twenties, when concessions with foreign capital began to arise in Russia like mushrooms, when contracts were concluded between Ford and the Gorky auto giant, between FIATOM and the former Moscow AMO, when the British built mining and processing plants for the Soviets in Chukotka, and the Germans established metal casting, Frol Seregin returned to Moscow.

This was the time of the NEP, the time of active business ties between the Soviets and the West, the time of the brilliant speeches of the People's Commissar Litvinov, the cultural developments of Bukharin, the time of the first concentration camps and the internal party struggle in the CPSU (B.).

From 1926 to 1929, Frol Seregin, prudently leaving his younger brother in the States to manage the production there, tried to revive his factory. The few workers who survived the civil survived during the epidemics of the "Spanish flu" and rash, did not lie in food detachments - they returned to Seregin. True, now he was no longer the sovereign owner, but only an "American shareholder."

It quickly became clear that the country of the victorious proletariat did not need real, really high-quality furniture. Former suppliers disappeared, People's Commissars brought bagpipes with plans, delivery schedule, transport tariffs, with the distribution of furniture through a working loan...

And who, in fact, could need furniture, which is designed for more than one decade? After all, night calls, arrests, the first islands of the Gulag came not after the murder of S.M. Kirov, not in 1934, but much earlier. It all started under Lenin, and after Stalin managed to defeat Trotsky, repression began to gain momentum. Both the commander of the Red Army and the simple hard worker lived only one day, without thinking ahead for a long time.

But it's not just about repression. Who was then even thinking about the future? - Not the same, about which Mayakovsky wrote: "workers are sitting under the old cart"...? Well, they sit for themselves, and let them sit! Even they do without rubbish. So, and so good for them. What does comfort have to do with it? What does quality have to do with it? What's the convenience? It is clear that the tribune of the revolution says: "workers are sitting in the mud and eating wet bread"! However, the stands themselves, singing all this disgrace, soon shot himself. He did not take responsibility for what he sang.

But Seregin was not a poet and never even sympathized with them. It became quite obvious to him that the concession was being disrupted, that the people were simply not able to buy furniture. It was necessary to look for a way out, otherwise the Bolsheviks could close the concession enterprise under the terms of the agreement, which they, in fact, began to do, taking up the Chukchi mining and processing plants of the British.

And here, against the background of universal furniture despondency, Frol Efimych came up with a completely ingenious idea in its simplicity: to produce not sofas, not chairs, and not even beds. He started producing spring mattresses!

Remember, Ilf and Petrov - "Citizens! Love mattresses!. " So these are classics about the very ones, about Seregin mattresses. The demand was extraordinary. They were installed on homemade, knocked down from stolen boards, frames, put on bricks, just put on the floor. The whole chapter is devoted to this mattress boom in "12 chairs," provoked in 1927 by Frol Seregin!

For some time, Frol Efimych amused. They served (albeit without fanfare, implicitly) a prayer service on March 8th. Seregin only gushed in his beard, looking at the sign, where instead of his last name it was now "Furniture Factory on March 8" and said to the old man Barkov:

• And let them what they want, then they say. It all came out on the sign anyway in my opinion!

In the same 1927, Barkov was arrested and exiled somewhere near Krasnoyarsk. And Seregin, looking at what was happening around him, finally said goodbye to Russia, to Moscow, to the factory, once pasted by his hands, and left his homeland forever.

Seregin's emigration to the United States

Frol Efimych, unlike Philip, who was accustomed to such affairs in his America, endured the revolution hard. There was even a drink, but he quickly came to his senses: he transferred capital through Stockholm to Philip's American accounts and went to America to visit him. Workshops, machines, warehouses - he threw everything. On the already launched series of light sofas named after Moritz Moon, he waved his hand, saying only "I give!."

In the United States, where the Seregins settled in Boston, the brothers invested in what appeared to be a missing furniture factory. But the experience did its job, and in two years Frol and Philip developed and launched a completely new series of sofas and chairs on the market, calling it a rather fashionable name - the Albert & Shtein series. The advertising agent who proposed the name did not even really know how the surname of the German scientist was spelled correctly. An extra letter crept into the spelling, and Frol Efimych after that finally hated everything related to advertising and released his younger brother for contacts with agents.

Nevertheless, the publicity stunt with the name turned out to be quite successful, and Albert & Shtein furniture in the market was in demand among people with above average wealth.

Some connections were also established with Europe. The same Hans Steindorf, a former employee of Seregin, returning to Germany in 1918, slowly established the production of soft furniture Albert & Shtein no license Seregin in his own small factory near Langenfeld.

But the trace of Danovsky, the best engineer of Seregin manufactories, broke off in Ukraine: Danovsky, who took the side of the Reds, will die in the very battles for Kakhovka, which Mikhail Svetlov sang.

1914: The emergence of the tradition of anniversaries on March 8

01.08.1914 From a letter from F.E. Seregin to Moritz Moona in Bruges:

"Heard, you have such a town - Derlake. The other day they showed the good shenilla. Cope and unsubscribe. And it's better to gain segments, but with Fedka my own and came out here to me. Don't pull. "

On March 8, 1914, residents of Sokolnikov, looking at people leaving the newly built Resurrection Church, which is near the park, were surprised to note that there were no hissing parish old women, no ducking falconers, no barns with children, no official people among the crowd.

Baptizing and pulling on the cartuses, only artisans came out of the church. Only a few gentlemen in vitzmunirs with engineering hammers in buttonholes, and the master in a partial dress conferred with the priest for a long time and left the temple last.

Many knew Barin in Sokolniki, but they saw a prayer service with craftsmen for the first time. So Frol Efimych Seregin, the founder and owner of the Seregin Furniture Manufactory, celebrated the tenth anniversary of his enterprise. Why did Seregin choose the eighth of March to celebrate the birthday of the manufactory?

Women's Day then in Russia, as, in general, and nowhere in the world, has not yet been celebrated. And to be honest, there were women at the factory - once or twice and got enough.

Artisans Frol Efimych and Danovsky were selected themselves, outbid from competitors, or even from abroad, writing out. For example, Moritz Moon, a Flemish from Bruges, set up upholstery workshops at Seregin, and Hans Steindorf developed what is now frivolously called the obscure word "design." Then it was art, and Steindorf owned it perfectly.

In other words, the main staff of Frol Seregin was male. Even behind the "Zingers," which at that time was already produced in Podolsk near Moscow, men were sitting. "A thin car," Seregin said, "where to plant a woman for it...."

This is then, already in the thirties, at the call of the Komsomol, but in fact, in dire need from the villages, they began to arrive at the woman's factory. When the percentage of their ratio with the male part of the workers began to prevail noticeably, the legend was born in the "bright" bosses that the factory was so called in honor of International Women's Day.

But it was very different.

From the interrogations of the OGPU, "removed," as it was customary to say, from the senior clerk S. Barkov in the gloomy 1927, it follows that Frol Efimych chose the day of March 8 for a prayer service only because it was this day that was the birthday of the younger Seregin, who disappeared, as Frol Efimych thought then, in a foreign land. So the prayer service was, as it were, double: both in memory of his brother and, at the same time, in honor of the anniversary of the factory. The brother was found the next year, but Frol Efimych did not postpone the holiday and in 1915 again arranged it on March 8th. And the next year, too. And then.

Not only in Sokolniki, not only throughout Moscow, but also in all cities of Russia, where the factory had contacts, they already knew that in March 8, the Seregin factory did not work. They began to be called - "March." Production expanded, people arrived in workshops and warehouses, and the Moscow man in the street was no longer able to break into the church that day. By the revolution on May 1, no one worked in Russia. But on March 8 - only Sereginsky!

Then other times came and the enterprise, for reasons beyond its control, did not work at all for several years, and when it opened again, the day of March 8th had already become a state proletarian holiday.

08.08.1914 Telegram of F.E. Seregin to Hans Steindorf:

"Ganya, I heard that Singer took a patent for a needle. Check it out. Yes, find out if there is a patent for Russia. And with springs not to.'

21.12.1916 From a letter to F.E. Seregin Danovsky:

"Antosha, what do I need: to poke around with the steam line? I know you, you don't make excuses. About why I could not but tell me. You better tell me what you did to help me! And do not complain about the war: fools fought all the way and will fight. We, thank God, do not make sofas for them.'

24.10.1917 F.E. Seregin inscription on the drawing:

"Andryushka Kalashnikov thinks that he is a genius, and I sell it to people."

This is one of the most recent recordings. Soon the history of the country made a turn.

1905: Rejection of support for revolutionaries and artists

The era required its own. Some model names were worth it! In 1905, Frol Efimych, along with the already produced "Egoza," "Two-headed Eagle" (by the way, the first corner sofa in Russia), "Madamka" was forced to launch such names as "Bombist," "Hellish Machine," "Coup" (one of the first folding models) and even "Proclamation."

Savva Morozov, an exceptional admirer of Seregin sofas, once brought Frol Efimych to fame with the terrorist Nikolai Bauman, who had already managed to become famous at that time.

The revolutionary, exhausted in battles with tsarism, "literally had nothing to rest on" and intended, as they now say "barter," in exchange for a close revolution, to ask Seregin for a sofa and a couple of chairs to furnish a turnout for his group.

In 1927, the former senior clerk of the Sereginsky manufactory S. Barkov told the investigators of the OGPU about a wonderful conversation of these three.

• Well, what, you, gentlemen socialists, achieve? as if Seregin asked Bauman.

"Let them decide you and me, Frol, wish! Morozov chuckled. - And our factories, let them smoke.

"Wow," Seregin realized. - And my artisans, in the world, so?

"Well, it's not! Bauman argued fervently. - The artisans themselves will manage your institution after the revolution.

"Well, you, nice man, then come to me for the sofa after this very revolution," Seregin finally decided and, saying goodbye to the guests, threw:

"Savva! Artists with sings are also not needed...

However, most of Seregin's life took place not in conversations with various wrestlers, but in trips to exhibitions, work with engineers, and the search for talented designers.

The technical thought in Russia was on the rise. With the advent of the Soviets, the opinion was established that we were backward until the 13th year, and, starting from the fourteenth, we had already slipped into the abyss, brought by the autocracy to the pen.

However, the archives say just the opposite. That was the time when Igor Sikorsky created his Ilya Muromets, the world's largest plane, to the analogue of which the designers of Europe and America later went for more than 10 years. The Russo-Balt plant produced cars, steam locomotives were assembled in Kharkov, and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, bloating a kerosene lamp, developed his theory of interplanetary communications at night.

I did not sleep, looking at what was happening around, and Frol Seregin. Furniture "Seregin Manufactory" was sold in its own Seregin "platz saloons" from Moscow to Irkutsk and from Arkhangelsk to unknown Kushka. Who and why bought it in Kushka is still unclear. But in the capitals she stood with Prince Kropotkin, Plevako's lawyer, Minister Witte, the all-powerful Peter Arkadyevich Stolypin, and many more with whom, including the August ones.

By the way, the slogan "Buy Russian!" Was born not at all in our time, but a hundred years ago! And not because of customs tariffs, very, by the way, favorable for foreigners at that time, not because of promoting "let it be bad, but your own," but precisely because "yours" in those years was too often better and cheaper than "someone else's."

And the slogan itself was born not in the government, but in the people. Suffice it to recall Vologda oil in Paris, Volga wheat in Canada, Sikorsky airplanes in France and Trekhgorki textiles in Brussels!

Seregin (for the first time in Russia) released a sofa bed, so ordinary now and a completely outlandish thing at that time. This building was called "Drem" and was driven by a mechanism developed for Seregin by mechanic Anton Semenovich Danovsky.

A senior mechanical engineer at the manufactory, without whom Frol Seregin did not make a single more or less important decision, a graduate of Kazan University, who once went through the same case with a certain Vl. Ulyanov, Danovsky quickly "quit the revolution," exchanging the idea of ​ ​ "liberating the working class from the tyranny of autocracy" for the idea of ​ ​ "liberating the working class from the tyranny of manual labor."

Danovsky's works at the manufactory appeared the first "mechanical hammers," the prototype of today's American staple pistols, which worked from overheated steam. On Klyazma near Seregin there were mills that drove fourteen circular saws, where wooden parts of the structures were processed, in Mytishchi huge zeikhhaus - Seregin warehouses were built of red brick.

By the way, recalling the Marxist theory of the spiral development of society, it is worth noting that in place of those once grandiose structures built by the works of Frol Efimych, now there is the most ordinary hangar, where one of the Moscow companies is still selling soft furniture. And he is successfully trading! A hundred years have passed, and the warehouse, although it is not a newspaper, is now, of course, not the former master's choirs, but still in 2010 it stands there, in Mytishchi, in the same place and works. He knew how, which means that Frol Efimych could choose places...

14.05.1912 Note by F.E. Seregin Danovsky:

"Antosha, look at the saw. It seems that they do not sharpen the cutters well. "

22.08.1912 From a letter from F.E. Seregin to brother Philip:

"Filya, are you a damn bald in that America of yours. And it's as if we don't find things in our homeland? "

10.02.1913 Danovsky:

"Antosha, you hand them over to these newsmen, I will nail them, praying, once nito. How I dug my own to our frames to scoop and heresy in the sheets of my hammers, it would be better to distinguish a stool from a trough. I pray with Christ, do not let them into the workshops. Say something yourself: they will turn all one over later. I coped in a merchant meeting - now such nonsense is called advertising. "

02.03.1913 From a letter from F.E. Seregin to brother Philip:

"Filya, and what are you talking about this German, who invented some special gross-buh. Would I look? "

14.12.1913 F.E. Seregin S. Barkov:

"I was visiting Nastasya (you know), I saw our" Egoza. " I told you, it is necessary to deliver something in human terms. Our scrap boxes were taken out by the Armenians. You - what, but I did not know where I was sitting with shame. And he told you - they take laundresses inexpensively on Yauza, why don't you eat our litters? "

1902: Seregin Furniture Manufactory

At the end of 1902, a former peasant from the Oryol province, Frol Seregin, together with his brother Philip, set up a small furniture repair workshop on Sukharevka.

Almost nothing is known about the first two years of the brothers. The Sukharevsky market of those times, according to Gilyarovsky's memoirs, was generally a dark place, and the characters who scouted on it were mainly known only to fillers from the secret police and even to a few newspaper reporters. Weak, as you know, did not survive on Sukharevka.

The Seregin brothers survived, and continued their work. True, separately: the eldest, Frol Efimych, moved to Sokolniki, where he founded his factory "Seregin Furniture Manufactory," and the youngest, Philip, emerged a couple of years later in Argentina as the owner of a company that did not have any more or less clear direction of activity.

What did Philip's company not do! Furniture, hostels for workers of the American telegraph company who then worked in Buenos Aires, wooden bodies for the first cars are far from a complete list of the activities of the younger Seregin. In 1905, when Russian Jews frightened by the first pogroms poured into Argentina, Philip even opened a kosher food store in the city of Tucuman.

It ended with the fact that the younger Seregin (or Phil, as he began to call himself) moved to Brazil, holed a section of the coast on some unknown river, where the harness, driven from all over the world, mined emeralds for him.

After Brazil, there was Mexico, Colombia, participating in several Latin American revolutions, which, as you know, in crowded Latin America for another year account for almost more than sunny days. As a result, the already rather winding trace of the younger Seregin was lost again. This time for a long time - for a whole seven years.

Frol Efimych behaved differently. He did not atomize for trifles, he did not look for easy profit, but he firmly held his business in peasant hands. In 1903, the factory went uphill after the elder Seregin managed to receive an order from the Merchant Assembly.

From that moment on, the former peasant became a member of the best houses in Moscow. His factory was not that large - not Morozov manufactories, of course - but the main thing that Frol Efimych always took "his client" was reliability, the quality of his furniture.

Competitors from manufacturers, and the merchants themselves, especially foreign ones, did not favor him. They knew, after all, - Seregin will not miss the new German sofa or chair. He will definitely buy, disassemble with his men to the nail, to the board. And surely, a bitch, he will do exactly the same for himself, and he will launch it in a month. And he will also boast - the German, you see, the tree is completely snotty, and I, they say, have a clean oak, pine, cherry...

And then Seregin bought a plantation of Caucasian beech. Where's good! - you go to the waters, you look at your own lumberjacks, you look at a new dryer, you fix the drunken German manager in a beech grove with oak brains. And the police chief is not a sin to bow to the ruble: you are not a tripe, a nice person, mine, I have people as a selection, and, thank God, my own protection is set. Here you go!

So it turned out that if someone wants to let dust in his eyes - he buys on Kuznetsk, and if he wants the same, it's only better and cheaper - he goes to Frol Efimych.

Seregin, following the example of the same Morozov or Ryabushinsky with Tretyakov, did not become a patron. I didn't spend money on artists, I only shuffled about their pictures once that "I don't understand this, they say, pampering is all," but I read the drawings easily, I never spared money for engineers, I wrote out the best machines from Germany - Krupp. Even the bolts were bought by God's message where; at Ohio State. Something Seregin, our Putilov and Sormovsky, did not suit.

But the situation obliged. There was just some trouble in Russia at the beginning of the century! - if you are a manufacturer, then help the revolution or patronage, artists and poets keep as if kokotok from Eropkinsky! Seregin understood that horseradish radishes were not sweeter - that he was revolutionaries, that artists were all Holodrans!

Notes