Pyotr I. Makushin, entrepreneurship, philanthropy, bookselling, regional bibliol­ogy, Siberia

What is it about?

The article explores Tomsk merchant Pyotr I. Makushin’s investing and entrepre­ neurial activity viewed as a financial basis for his educational and charity projects. Drawing on newspapers and new archival documents, Makushin’s activity as an entrepreneur and in­ vestor in publishing, bookselling and other types of profit-making business is reconstructed. Under the conditions of increasing competition, Makushin managed to remain the first and best businessman on the Siberian book market due to his unceasing attention to the quality and variety of products he offered and to various forms of communication with readers, through studying customers’ interests and needs, monitoring new releases, distributing book catalogues and advertising in newspapers, as well as due to his efforts to expand bookselling across Tomsk province and the opening of a new bookstore in Irkutsk which was an adminis­ trative, economic and cultural center of Eastern Siberia. In spite of multifacetedness of his personality and activity, he was, first and foremost, an entrepreneur. Relying upon public trust, Makushin skillfully combined the pursuit of personal well-being with his concern for the public good. A close relationship and interdependence of his commercial and public activ­ity allow us speak of not philanthropy, but rather of socially oriented and socially responsible entrepreneurship on his part. In order to spread education, Makushin needed to have a stable financial basis, and it seems to be impossible to understand how major long-term social pro­jects were implemented in Siberia and what results they produced, without studying how this basis was created and developed. As opposed to the firmly established view of Makushin’s entrepreneurial activity as being extraordinarilysuccessful, it is shown that he would also often fail in business. Special attention is paid to the nationalization of property of ‘another Yermak who conquered Siberia with books’ as Makushin was called - an event that put an end to his biography as a merchant in pre-revolution Russia.

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