My dear Ku-ku and all who looked at the light!

So the New Year 2016 has come - and I really want to hope that it will be calm, peaceful, joyful and full of miracles for all of us!

I kept thinking to tell you something interesting for the new year on our (my!) favorite retro topics - and quite unexpectedly it helped me in choosing a radio.

When I was making a salad, a man called on the air and declared indignantly that before the revolution New Year did not celebrate - and in general, this is a completely Soviet holiday.

And here is and not Soviet!

New Year in pre-revolutionary Russia was celebrated, met and celebrated. Of course, Christmas was more important then, but on New Year's Eve they also went to visit each other, drank champagne at midnight, arranged balls and masquerades.

Many, as now, celebrated the New Year at home: “January 1, 1917. We celebrated the New Year with our family, there was no one ... ”(from the diary of Lev Tikhomirov)
Or here is an excerpt from a magazine sketch:
“I am the New Year! - the stranger continued. - Every time I appear to people as a genius-comforter; they meet me with whatever they can - champagne and fuselage, in the family circle and in the club, in luxurious wards and in wretched huts. I am the most popular person in the month of December ... ”(Jeronim Yasinsky“ New Year ”, 1884).

"The celebration of Christmas and the New Year in Russia was established in the reign of Peter I, who decided to celebrate it from January 1, 1700, before that time the new year came on September 1. Naturally, St. Petersburg, founded in 1703, became the main center of the New Year's festive ceremonial. At the same time, New Year trees first appeared in the future capital, in addition, the onset of the year was celebrated with cannon salute from the walls of the Peter and Paul and Admiralty fortresses.The celebration was also accompanied by a liturgy.

However, not all traditions took root right away - if cannon firing continued until the end of the 18th century, then after the death of the founder of St. Petersburg, they stopped putting up Christmas trees. This tradition was resumed only in the reign of Nicholas I.

In 1817, the wife of the future Russian Emperor Nicholas I, Alexandra Feodorovna, made it a mass tradition to set up a Christmas tree for the New Year. Members of the imperial family noted that the holiday itself was held at home. So, for example, Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, daughter of Emperor Nicholas I, wrote: “On the eve of the new year, Papa appeared at the bedside of each of us, seven children, to bless us. Pressing my head against his shoulder, I said how grateful I am to him.

“Until the end of the 19th century, New Year’s festivities in the capital of the Russian Empire were modest, much more significant holiday was Christmas. Moreover, in the first half of the 19th century, it was celebrated on an even larger scale due to the fact that on December 25 the expulsion of Napoleonic troops from Russia was also celebrated. All this time an integral part new year holidays Epiphany, celebrated on January 6, was also. Already in the reign of Peter I, the standard was raised at Christmas - as it was supposed to be in all holidays– and kept him until January 6th.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the situation began to change a little - New Year's celebrations and festivities become more solemn than Christmas ones, that is, the secular holiday gradually began to crowd out the church one. Epiphany celebrations ceased altogether after 1905.

New Year's holiday for a long time was like all other days of Christmas time. So, on January 1, 1853, the newspaper "Sankt-Peterburgskiye Vedomosti" reported:

“Petersburg spends Vasily’s Day (January 31) in the same way as all other evenings: he plays cards the same way, he dances the same way, he has dinner and drinks champagne the same way, with the only difference that he adds congratulations on the New Year.”

The study of memoirs is very interesting and revealing. This is how Alexander Nikitenko, a historian of literature, a censor, a professor at St. Petersburg University and a full member of the Academy of Sciences, describes the meeting of the New Year in his diaries in different decades.

"January 1, 1863, Tuesday
New Year. Everyone seemed suddenly mad, what a bustle and bustle! What is it? Has there been any radical change in nature or in humans? Indeed, in essence, there is not the slightest hint that anything new has happened that would form the boundary between 1862 and 1863. Meanwhile, congratulations are pouring in from all sides, everyone gives in to some kind of hope, probably just as unrealizable this year as in the past. And yet, it is not bad that such a custom exists. For the lack of true goods, a person needs at least the ghost of a good better. And all this running around is a kind of occupation that diversifies the ordinary prose of life ...
January 1, 1874, Tuesday.
As usual, a bottle of champagne was prepared for me to celebrate the New Year, and we, that is, me and my family, met him with glasses quite lively, if not cheerfully, and sat out until half past two in the morning.

There is also a very interesting entry in his diary:

"12am. I meet the New Year with a pen in my hand: I prepare legal lectures. But this evening the matter is especially difficult. My apartment borders on the abode of some old woman who looks like a sorceress in the novels of Walter Scott. The exuberant songs of the Bacchantes still do not stop there, who, it seems, made a decent libation in honor of the coming year. It is amazing how our low-class women are devoted to drunkenness.

So our modern complaints about the soldering of the Russian people during the New Year holidays are also rooted in tsarist times.

And here is a humorous sketch from Anton Pavlovich Chekhov:

At the end of the 19th century, two culinary events take place, the role of which in the traditions of celebrating the New Year is difficult to overestimate. In the 1880s, tangerines became widespread as a New Year's treat. And in 1894, the first written mention of Olivier salad was recorded.

The canonical recipe with hazel grouse, crayfish tails and capers is now known to everyone. In addition to the delicacy salad, caviar, fish, roasted pigs and, of course, alcohol in quantities exceeding the capabilities of the average person were frequent guests on the tables of that time.

“A glass, yes two, and where there is a glass of red or white, and cognac without a bill to add, - by evening, high degrees have formed. From six different pigs I tasted, half aspic and half fried, ham, how many caviar! In a word, I came home sick, and even now I can’t come to my senses.

When I look at the piglet's face, it makes me tremble. If he weren’t an insensitive beast, and besides, a jellied one, it would seem that he would have traveled to his decorated physiology, ”the News of the Day newspaper wrote about the traditions of New Year’s visits at the beginning of the 20th century.

Didn't save on decoration holiday table. “In the middle, along the length of a huge table, there was a wide dense ridge of lilies of the valley. I know that there were 40,000 lilies of the valley, and I know that 4,000 gold rubles were paid in Noah's gardening for a row. It was January, after all, and each lily of the valley cost a dime. On a huge snack table, which is now impossible to describe, there were decorated blocks of ice at both ends, and multi-colored lights shone through the ice, somehow deftly included in the ice light bulbs. There were buckets of caviar in the blocks,” the artist Sergei Vinogradov recalled in 1907 about the celebration at the Metropol.

Another place for revelry is the Yar restaurant. Singer Fyodor Chaliapin (1873-1938) described the New Year's Eve there as a holiday "among African splendor": "Mountains of fruits, all varieties of salmon, salmon, caviar, all brands of champagne and all humanoid ones - in tailcoats. Some are already drunk, although it is not yet twelve o'clock. But after twelve, everyone is drunk without exception. They embrace and say to each other with purely Russian good nature:

I love you, although you are a bit of a swindler!

You yourself, dear, it's time to rot in prison!

P-kiss!

They kiss three times. It's very touching, but a little disgusting."

And of course, everyone sent each other cards - both special New Year's and New Year's and Christmas.

The exact date of the appearance of the Russian New Year's card is unknown. However, many historians associate this event with the name of the famous artist Nikolai Nikolaevich Karazin (1842-1908), whose last works are dated 1901.

Elizaveta Merkuryevna Bem (1843-1914) is considered to be another master of New Year's cards.

In the second half of the 19th century, the fashion for New Year cards, decorated in a sentimental-lubok style borrowed from Europeans.

Today is New Year 2013. Many people congratulate their relatives and friends with New Year's cards. So it was many years ago. It is interesting to see what these postcards were like in pre-revolutionary Russia. Collection of postcards taken from here

№1.

No. 2. Old Russian postcard with Santa Claus

Number 3. Old Russian postcard "Happy New Year!"

No. 4. Old Russian postcard "Happy New Year!"

No. 5. Vintage New Year's card by a child

No. 7. Very beautiful vintage postcard"Happy New Year!"

No. 8. Children feeding birds.
Old Russian postcard "Happy New Year!"

No. 9. Cool old Russian postcard
"Happy New Year!"

No. 11. Old Russian New Year's card
with small children

No. 12. Old Russian postcard "Happy New Year!"

No. 15. Old Russian postcard "Happy New Year!"

No. 16. Old Russian New Year's card
with Santa Claus

No. 16. Airship drawing
on an old Russian postcard "Happy New Year!"

No. 20. Horseshoe for happiness.
Old Russian postcard "Happy New Year!"

No. 21. Pre-revolutionary Russian postcard "Happy New Year!"

No. 23. Old Russian New Year's card with a steam locomotive

No. 27. An old steam locomotive on a pre-revolutionary Russian postcard
"Happy New Year!"

No. 28. Pre-revolutionary Russian New Year
card with an angel

No. 29. Pre-revolutionary Russian New Year's card with an airplane.
Cheerful congratulations for the pilot! :)

No. 33. Girl with an accordion in the old Russian
New Year greeting card

No. 34. Old New Year greeting
card with skaters

№35. Happy family.
Pre-revolutionary Russian photo postcard "Happy New Year!"

There is a common expression: "The newspaper lives one day." For contemporaries, this is indeed the case. But for posterity, old newspapers can say much more about the era than the authors of distant publications assumed. You just need to carefully read the lines faded from time to time. Opening the column "Seal of the Epoch" with an analysis of the newspapers of 1917, Rodina intends to keep it until November 2017, when the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution will be celebrated. We look forward to your feedback, dear readers. And wishes: what would you like to know from the newspapers of the revolutionary year?

Meeting the New Year always provokes reflections about what it will become, how it will differ from the previous one. AT Russian newspapers for January 1, 1917, the past visibly rises in its incompleteness and unpredictability. A sophisticated politician and an experienced financier, a worker and a peasant, a military officer and a layman - everyone hoped that the coming year would finally untie numerous Gordian knots in the economy and politics.

And all Russians, regardless of class, longed for peace. The past year, despite the grandiose success of the Brusilov breakthrough, did not bring an end to the world slaughter. But the authors and heroes of newspaper publications believed that 1917 would be the year of victory for the Allies and the defeat of the Central Powers.

That's just the real Russian reality was in obvious contradiction with bright hopes.

The slogan of the moment is revolution

January 1, 1917.... All printed publications, without division into party affiliation and political sympathies, speak of the inevitability of the revolution. A hundred years later, it even seems that the newspapers gradually prepared fellow citizens for the inevitable social upheavals. Of course, this is just an illusion, but at the beginning of January 17, for the most educated and insightful Russians, the inevitability of radical changes in the near future was obvious.

Deputy of the State Duma of the 1st convocation Fyodor Kokoshkin realized that Russian empire celebrates the New Year in the conditions of a growing state crisis, prophesied a political revolution for Russia and was not afraid to formulate a radical conclusion in the Russkiye Vedomosti newspaper:

"It is necessary to replace the collapsing system of irresponsibility with responsible management ... Changing the management system is again becoming the slogan of the moment ..." 1

Economist Alexander Sokolov in the same "Russian Vedomosti" argued that the country's economy is mortally ill and only a radical surgical intervention can end the protracted disease. The argument is tough: there are about 8.5 billion in circulation paper money whose value is declining day by day. The Russian Empire covered its military expenses to a large extent by issuing paper money. The author of Russkiye Vedomosti suggested imposing a progressive income and property tax on all Russians, otherwise an excess of paper money becoming cheaper every day would lead to the inevitable collapse of the entire financial system and to a halt in production 2 .

Mikhail Mikhailovich Zhvanetsky was not yet born, so his catchphrase is "Economists! Shut up everyone!" in January 1917 was unknown to the Russians.

For our Victory!

However, on the state Olympus, the situation was seen as strong and unshakable. On January 1, 1917, as evidenced by the Novoye Vremya newspaper, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Emperor Nicholas II deigned to accept congratulations in the Grand Palace of Tsarskoye Selo, where the first ranks of the Court, ministers, persons of the Sovereign's retinue and among them the Grand Dukes, representatives of the diplomatic corps congratulated the monarch . Everything is familiar, solemn and blissful. The Tsar graciously talked to the rare lucky ones from among those gathered, and at six o'clock he left the Grand Palace.

Russkoye Slovo informed readers about how the New Year was celebrated at the headquarters of the Southwestern Front. The commander-in-chief of the armies of the front, Adjutant General Alexei Alekseevich Brusilov 3 delivered a pathetic speech:

"... Now a new year is coming, 1917. Personally, both from the information at my disposal and from my deep faith, I am quite convinced ... that this year the enemy will finally be finally defeated. We will destroy him we don’t want it at all, but we must punish him for the sea of ​​blood with which he flooded Europe... I raise a glass to the Supreme Leader of the Russian land, the Sovereign Emperor, to Holy Russia, to our Victory! Long live the Sovereign Emperor! Long live Holy Russia ! Hurrah!.." 4

(Looking ahead, we recall that on March 2, 1917, General Brusilov, along with other front commanders, will speak out in favor of the abdication of the tsar from the throne "for the sake of the country's unity in a formidable time of war.")

Against this major background, the warning voices of serious and well-meaning people were not very audible.

GOELRO-1917

The newspaper "Russian Vedomosti" in the Sunday issue of January 1, 1917 published an article "Our Industry" by its regular author, professor-economist Lev Borisovich Kafengauz:

“The extreme discrepancy between the demand and supply of goods and the absolutely exceptional rise in prices associated with it naturally should have caused an intensified work of industrial enterprises; however, this work, carried out in wartime conditions, led not so much to a general increase in production, but to modifications in the internal structure of our industry" 5 .

One of these "modifications" was the appropriation by the Council of Ministers of 32 million rubles for the construction of a hydroelectric power station at the Malaya Imatra (Imatrankoski) waterfall, which was located on the territory of the Grand Duchy of Finland, near Petrograd. Until now, the waterfall has been a fashionable picnic spot and has only attracted tourists. From now on, it was to become a place for the introduction of technical innovations. "Petrogradskiye Vedomosti" No. 3 published a life-affirming article "Our technical progress", in which a picture full of optimism was drawn: construction work" will be started immediately, among deep winter, and with the expectation that by the autumn of 1918 the entire new grandiose technical structure would be completed. According to the project, the white coal of Imatra will give Petrograd half of all the energy that the capital consumes.

Was it not from this ambitious project a few years later, in December 1921, that the famous Leninist plan GOELRO (abbreviated from the State Commission for Electrification of Russia) grew?

It was the third year of the war, the capital was faced with a noticeable lack of energy. " Very coldy in Petrograd, reaching up to 30-35 degrees, showed in all its ugliness the helplessness of the capital with its six-story bulks, in which the heat barely reached 8-9 degrees. The situation of the residents in houses with steam and gas heating was especially miserable: ... the pipes were not heated, the water froze, and the benefactors of heat, the stokers, made unexpected claims that the coming frosts would cause them too much trouble and unnecessary work ... "7

An article in the Moskovskie Vedomosti newspaper, signed by the pseudonym Putnik, was accompanied by a metaphorical speaking person with a classical education heading "A million torments" 8 . There were still 62 years left before the release of the series "The Rich Also Cry" on television, otherwise the author would have preferred to use a different metaphor...

Chaliapin, Kshesinskaya and the deficit

Meanwhile, the daily life of the home front went on as usual. The Russians went to the theater and cinema, read books, were interested in sports.

In the first days of January 1917, Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin staged a charity performance at the Moscow Bolshoi Theater. Wagner's opera Don Carlos was performed for the first time with his participation.

In Moscow, a skating competition for the Cup took place in honor of the famous champion N.V. Strunnikov. Yakov Fedorovich Melnikov won. Novoye Vremya reported the technical results: "Melnikov won the distance of 1,500 meters in 2 minutes 42 seconds ... Melnikov finished the distance of 10,000 meters in 20 minutes 4.6 seconds." 9

In Petrograd, at the skating rink of the Putilov circle, a match for the Cup of the Petrograd Hockey League took place. In hockey with a ball (there was no other yet) the hosts played with "Sport". The total score is 8:1 in favor of "Sport".

On the stage of the Mikhailovsky Theater, during the performance, famous primas Karsavina, Kshesinskaya, Geltser competed in favor of the theater troupe. "A little of everything!" - this is how an anonymous strict theater critic titled his article in Novoye Vremya, thirsting for artistic finds, sensations and revelations, but never found them:

"... An ancient dish, prepared without pretense, to the taste of the good old days. Fun, vaudeville, naive."

A very short period of time will pass, dividing History into two periods - "before" and "after", and how much the unlucky critic will regret this good old time, which he so arrogantly treats on January 6, 1917.

However, the critic does not cross boundaries and speaks of the former favorite of the tsar with all respect: "M.F. Kshesinskaya was a magician. She owns the secrets of technology, which is not accessible to anyone from modern dancers. E.V. Geltser is much inferior to her ..." 10

However, even the ballet fairies were forced to reckon with the new realities of the wartime. The commodity deficit also affected their closed little world, albeit in a very specific form, as Birzhevye Vedomosti informed its readers in the evening issue of February 10, 1917:

"Ballet dancers are now experiencing a shoe crisis. Until now, ballet shoes with hard toes were received exclusively from Milan. True, there was a workshop in Moscow that produces these shoes, but domestic production was not in favor with ballerinas. Recently, one of them ordered from Milan a batch of shoes worth 800 rubles, but they perished along with the ship, which was sunk by a German submarine" 11 . The penultimate sentence contained a transparent allusion to Matilda Kshesinskaya. Who else among the ballet dancers could afford such expenses?

Ordinary ballet dancers, graduates of the ballet school, received only 600 rubles a year. Only at the beginning of February 1917 did the directorate of the Imperial Theaters become generous with an "increase", which amounted to ... ten rubles a month 12 . At the same time, the soloist of the Imperial Theatres, lyric-dramatic tenor Dmitry Alekseevich Smirnov received, as Petrogradskaya Gazeta wrote, 1,250 rubles for an exit. And the average budget of a female student at the Bestuzhev Courses was 38 rubles a month, and "the average expenditure on housing and food is 80 percent of this 'amount'" 14 . And finally, the average annual cost per medical care factory worker in the Moscow province was 7 kopecks 15 .

Such a blatant disproportion created a breeding ground in the minds of the intelligentsia, first of all, for extremist and leveling slogans.

Home Front Marauders

The extreme discrepancy between demand and supply of goods caused an unprecedented rise in prices. In this troubled water, the "looters of the rear", earning 400-500% on each transaction, felt very comfortable 16 . Petrograd restaurants were swept by a real "reveling epidemic". Huge jackpots, acquired by speculators on supplies to the army, were thoroughly "ventilated" in the capital's entertainment establishments. Speculators filled the first-class restaurants, theaters, cinemas, and exhibitions of Petrograd. During the premiere of "Masquerade" at the Alexandrinsky Theater, a seat in the 6th row cost 22 or 23 rubles. (In order to appreciate the fabulousness of this amount, it should be taken into account that a pound of sugar from speculators cost 1 ruble 60 kopecks, five times more expensive than with cards.)

The abundance of money contributed to the rise of art. The Petrograd artists who took part in the vernissage of the "Union of Russian Artists" sold out all their paintings on the very first day of the opening of the exhibition. Popular among the metropolitan bohemia cafe "Halt of Comedians", painted by Sudeikin himself, in which the most famous poets of Petrograd - from Akhmatova to Mayakovsky - ceased to be accessible to the inhabitants of the attic. "Halt of Comedians" turned into "Halt of Speculators" 17 .

Despite the high cost of tickets - a ticket to the box cost 3 rubles - with crowded cinema halls there were films with Vera Kholodnaya. Gypsy choirs experienced their better days. Riders on the run earned huge sums. It was said about one of the best riders that he earned at least 200 thousand rubles in a year 18 . The sweepstakes flourished on the run.

"Marauder bacchanalia" went hand in hand with the rise in crime. changed dramatically appearance a robber and a swindler: they put on expensive fur coats and began to dress in the latest fashion. Newspapers complained that it became difficult to distinguish a bank robber from a financier. The swindlers did not disdain to "go to work" in an officer's uniform or the clothes of sisters of mercy, appealing to the patriotic feelings of fellow citizens. The authorities unsuccessfully fought both speculation and crime: only small fry came across. For example, in Rostov-on-Don, five merchants were arrested "for speculative concealment of meat." Unlucky speculators, under police escort, were taken to the market, where they were forced to sell meat not at black market prices, but at the state tax.

"This measure had a calming effect on the population..." wrote the newspaper Russkoe Slovo with satisfaction. But the newspapers of 1917 frankly wrote about the main thing: the food question had become a political one.

Golden days of crime

The townsfolk looked with concern and confusion at the menacing growth of crime, including armed crime. The criminal world has become insolent. Those were the golden days of the underworld. The situation in the capital was getting worse day by day. On Wednesday, January 4, Petrogradskiye Vedomosti, for example, reported:

"Chronicle. During the transfer to prison of the clerk V. Petrov, arrested on the eve of the New Year, who committed theft of 130,000 rubles ... the latter escaped from the escorts accompanying him ..." 20

A much more egregious case: at the end of January, while walking on Krestovsky Island, Admiral Grigorovich, the Minister of Marine, was unexpectedly attacked by two hooligans. The admiral, walking without guards, did not lose his head and pulled out a revolver from his pocket. The hooligans rushed to run and disappeared through the gates of an empty cottage. The pursuit of results did not give 21 .

The everyday life of the capital Petrograd has lost its former serenity. The usual measures to combat armed crime have shown their ineffectiveness. Emergency measures were needed. The Petrograd mayor convened a special meeting to determine measures to prevent theft and robbery. The authorities were inclined to explain the rise in crime by military circumstances. Society met such explanations with indignation. The Novoye Vremya newspaper wrote:

"But after all, the police did not suffer any damage from the war: the bailiff, the police officers, and the policemen successfully avoid being drafted to the front, and, consequently, their cadres have not thinned out ..." 22

You can't live like this

Reading old newspapers convinces: by the end of January 1917, dissatisfaction became general, it was expressed by the inhabitants of the attic or "corners", and the owners of mansions. The Russian entrepreneur, banker, Old Believer, representative of the Ryabushinsky dynasty, Pavel Pavlovich Ryabushinsky, became one of the initiators of the All-Russian Trade and Industrial Congress, at which, for the first time in its history, Russian business intended to openly formulate and present its own claims to power.

The congress was to be held in Moscow. The authorities banned the forum. On Sunday, January 22, Ryabushinsky was invited to the Moscow mayor. As Russkoye Slovo wrote, "in the town authorities, they talked with P.P. Ryabushinsky ... about the prohibition of the trade and industrial congress and about the inadmissibility of replacing the congress with any private meetings" 23 . Pavel Pavlovich ignored this prohibition. On Tuesday, January 24, at 4 pm, all the metropolitan, as well as the provincial representatives of trade and industry who had gathered in Moscow, gathered at Ryabushinsky's apartment: the congress pretended to be a private meeting.

Pavel Pavlovich delivered a keynote speech:

“The means that we own were not the fruit of an award, but were created by us and our ancestors through hard work from almost nothing ... And yet the state makes increased demands on us. ... We feel that the social atmosphere is becoming more tense. .. What should we do in the name of saving Russia? We only know that this cannot go on like this…” 24

The rhetorical question remained unanswered. The conclusion was correct. A month later, the February Revolution began.

How did the fate of the authors of publications

Fyodor Kokoshkin, the founder of constitutional law in Russia, was arrested in the very first days of the October Revolution and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, then transferred to the Mariinsky Prison Hospital, where he was brutally murdered on the night of January 6-7, 1918.

Alexander Sokolov, one of the most prominent Russian theorists in the field of finance and law of the early 20th century, author a large number works on the problems of monetary circulation and taxation, was shot in 1937.

Lev Kafengauz, an economist and politician, was arrested twice after the revolution, but this did not break his spirit: he continued to write articles on the history of Russian industry in Butyrka prison. He was convicted and sent to Ufa for three years. He died in Moscow in 1940. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1987.

ONLY NUMBERS

The discrepancy between supply and demand, on the one hand, and the frugality inherent in the layman against the backdrop of New Year's high prices, on the other, gave rise to an increase in deposits by the end of 1916:

"According to information received by telegraph, the increase in cash deposits in all savings banks from December 23 to December 31 of the past year amounted to 25.4 million rubles, and for the whole of December - 82.5 million rubles" 25 .

The growth of deposits slowed down inflation, but, of course, could not get rid of it.

1. Kokoshkin F. Our state crisis // Russian Vedomosti. 1917. January 1st. N1 // 1917. M.: Interros Publishing Program, 2007. P. 4.
2. Sokolov A. War and our financial prospects // Ibid.
3. Smirnov A.A. Brusilov waves // Motherland. 2016. No. 7. S. 68-73.
4. 1917. M.: Publishing program "Interros", 2007. P. 6.
5. Ibid. C.5.
6. Ibid. S. 9.
7. Ibid. S. 27.
8. "A million torments" - a critical article by the famous Russian writer I.A. Goncharova. Written in 1872 and dedicated to the comedy of A.S. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit". The very title of the article comes from Chatsky's phrase from the comedy "Woe from Wit". The phrase has become catchy.
9. 1917. M.: Publishing program "Interros", 2007. P. 8.
10. Ibid. S. 11.
11. Ibid. S. 45.
12. Ibid. S. 36.
13. Ibid. S. 38.
14. Their life // Exchange Vedomosti. 1917. February 9. N 16090 (morning issue) // Ibid. S. 43.
15. Survey of the life of workers // Day. 1917. February 10. N 40 // Ibid. S. 46.
16. Commercial and industrial shamelessness // Moscow Vedomosti. 1917. January 27. N 22 // Ibid. S. 27.
17. Ostrozhsky K. "The halt of speculators" // New Time. 1917. February 23. N14716 // Ibid. S. 54.
18. Drawing of the Imperial prize of 24,000 rubles // Petrogradskaya gazeta. 1917. February 11. N41 // Ibid. S. 45.
19. Impact on merchants // Russian Word. 1917. January 18. N14 // Ibid. S. 19.
20. Ibid. S. 8.
21. Attack on the naval minister // Russian Word. 1917. January 28. N23 // Ibid. S. 28.
22. Every day, thefts and robberies // New Time. 1917. January 7th. N14670 // Ibid. S. 12.
23. Ibid. S. 23.
24. Ibid. S. 25.
25. Ibid. S. 11.
26. Reid D. 10 days that shook the world. M.: Gospolitizdat, 1957. S. 253, 254.

The growth in the number of Russian newspapers was especially intensive in the late 1890s and early 1900s. In 1860, seven daily newspapers and 98 were published in Russia, published from one to three times a week. In 1913 there were 417 daily newspapers, 10 of which were published twice a day.

At the end of the 1890s, the circulation of individual newspapers reached 50-70 thousand copies. "Russian Vedomosti" had a circulation of 25 thousand, "Svet" - 70 thousand, "Petersburgskaya Gazeta" - 30 thousand, "Odessky Listok" - 10 thousand, "Kiev Slovo", "Kievlyanin", "Southern Territory", "Volzhsky Herald" - from 2 to 5 thousand copies.

At this time, "Petersburgskaya Gazeta" occupies a leading position in retail sales in St. Petersburg: in a year, "Petersburgskaya Gazeta" sold 2,495,393 issues (for comparison: "New Time" - 1,824,857 copies, "Petersburg Leaf" - 1,722,885 copies). N.S. Leskov characterized the newspaper as a "gray" sheet, which is read by 300,000 lackeys, janitors, cooks, soldiers and shopkeepers. "Petersburgskaya Gazeta" focused on the city dweller, who was interested in the everyday, everyday life of the capital.

After the revolution of 1905-1907. Newspaper circulation increased significantly. Russkoye Slovo had 250,000, the second edition of Birzhevye Vedomosti and Peterburgsky Listok - from 80,000, the largest and most expensive newspaper Novoye Vremya - about 60,000, Russkiye Vedomosti - 50,000 and etc. The largest provincial newspapers - "Kyiv Mysl", "Southern Territory", "Odessa News", "Odesskiy Listok", "Priazovsky Territory" - from 12 to 40 thousand per day. Ordinary provincial newspapers - 1-3 thousand.