Kushnerev, Ivan Nikolayevich

Kushnerev Ivan Nikolayevich (Кушнерёв Иван Николаевич) (24.11.1827-10.02.1896) – Russian writer and publisher, the son of a poor noble landowner. The Partnership I. N. Kushnerev and Co. publishing house, founded in Moscow in 1871, was one of the largest and best-known publishing houses of pre-revolutionary Russia. It published a wide range of fiction and specialised literature, including medical works. His typography house became famous not only for publishing such authors as Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Bunin, and Herbert Wells, but also made a significant contribution to the development of medicine. It was here that such famous luminaries of surgery and therapy of the time published their works: 

• Pirogov, Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov (1810-1881) was a famous surgeon, the founder of military field surgery. His works, including Russian edition of the Beginnings of General Military Field Surgery, were also published in this publishing house.
• Pavlov, Ivan Petrovish. Russian physiologist and neurophysiologist, Nobel Price winner. His Lectures on the Work of the Principal Digestive Glands was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
• Botkin, Sergei Petrovich (1832-1889), an outstanding Russian therapist and the founder of scientific clinical medicine in Russia. 
• Zakharin, Grigory Antonovich (1829-1897) was a famous therapist, one of the founders of the Moscow clinical school. 
• Inozemtsev, Fyodor Ivanovich (1802-1869) – professor of medicine, one of the first Russian surgeons, the Head of the Chair of Surgery in Moscow University, who made a significant contribution to the development of medical and surgical education. 

Publishing house I. N. Kushnerev and Co. actively cooperated with leading medical specialists of their time, contributing to the popularization of medical knowledge and the development of science in Russia. 

In 1869 he founded his own printing house in Moscow (known in the literature under the name “Kushneryovka”), which initially produced so-called accidental products - letterheads, invoices, labels, office books, etc., from 1878 accepted orders for books, from 1880 - for illustrated publications. In 1875 he transformed his firm into a company on faith, in 1888 - into a joint-stock company of printing and trade I. N. Kushneryov and Co. (He was the chairman of the board). K. opened branches of the firm in Kiev (1882) and St. Petersburg (1892-93), acting there as a publisher.

The company's products were awarded a gold medal at the 1st All-Russian Printing Exhibition in St. Petersburg (1895) and the highest award at the All-Russian Art and Industry Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod (1896). In 1878-94 K. published 60 titles of books as a publisher. In 1894 K.'s Moscow printing house fulfilled 368 orders for printing books, brochures and periodicals with a total circulation of about 1 million copies; from the 1910s it was one of the largest printing enterprises in Russia (1160 workers in 1914; in 1918 it was nationalized, from 1922 - “Red Proletarian”).

In October, 1961 Kushnerev founded the folk magazine “Gramotei” published at first 5 issues a year, and since 1869 it was monthly. On the pages of the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron was given the following review of this print edition: “The first years of Gramotei is a curious attempt of a folk magazine, which, adjusting to the reader, brings him into the circle of modern life; but later it turned simply into a periodical collection of articles, mostly fiction, and although it contains the names of Reshetnikov, Levitov, some teachers and other quite famous writers, but its special purpose - to be a folk magazine - as if disappeared.” Nevertheless, the magazine enjoyed the popularity of readers for many years and ceased publication only at the end of 1876. Kushnerev's next publication was the “People's Newspaper” (published in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1863-1869), from 1869 he published the “General Newspaper”, renamed in 1871 as the “Moscow Exchange Newspaper”.

In 1869 I. N. Kushnerev moved to Moscow, where he was appointed editor of the “Moscow City Police Gazette”. He published everyday sketches of a denunciatory nature from the life of pre-reform Russia in “Iskra”, “Vek” and other publications. In the same 1869 Kushnerev founded a printing house in Moscow, which, repeatedly rebuilt, soon became one of the best printing enterprises.

In the 1870s a technical revolution took place in the Russian bookbinding business, as a result of which the transition from the artisanal method of bookbinding production to the factory method was realized. The first Russian factories for the production of mass publishing bookbindings of all types and kinds, equipped with foreign-made equipment and working according to the advanced machine technology of the time, were established. In order to advertise the factory products from that time on the covers of bookbindings there appeared special stamps - typographically printed labels (with the name or sign of the factory owner), which were pasted on the front cover of the back cover of the binding. Often the name of the bindery was embossed on the covers.

In January 1876 he founded the publishing house on faith “Kushnerev I. N. and Co. N. and Co.”, which began to produce its own and customized editions at a high polygraphic level peculiar to his printing house. In 1891 the works of Mikhail Lermontov were published in 3 volumes, with drawings by 14 major Russian artists M. Vrubel, K. Korovin, I. Repin, V. Serov and others. In this edition for the first time were published - drawings by M. Vrubel to “Demon”. A series of popular brochures “War and Culture” became very famous.

Kushnerev became famous as a patron of the arts who gave large amounts of money for charitable purposes in Moscow. In 1883-84 he took an active part in the establishment of a special Graphic Group of printers and lithographers at the Moscow branch of the Imperial Russian Technical Society.