In the first half of the 19th century, the name of the entrepreneur Grigory Fedotovich Zotov, popularly nicknamed the Kyshtym Beast, sounded throughout Russia. This man in the strangest way combined the talents of a capable manager and innovator with extreme, literally pathological cruelty …
Grigory Zotov's father was from the Old Believers. In official papers, he was listed as a salesman and served at the Nevyansk plant. But by the will of fate, he ended up at the Shuralinsky plant, in the Urals. There Grigory Zotov was born. He studied mining in practice, but began his career as a critical master. This is the name of the people working at the forge.
Iron with two sables
In 1798, the owner of the plant procured a decree from the Berg-Collegium on the creation of the Main Verkh-Isetsky Factory Board. Grigory Zotov was appointed to manage it from the very first days.
Under him, the Verkh-Isetsky plant was greatly transformed. Instead of wooden buildings, stone ones were rebuilt, new equipment was installed in the factory workshops. A mechanical factory for the production of steam engines was commissioned. All this made it possible to ensure the growth of production and launch new types of products. Especially popular was the sheet metal roofing produced at the plant, which even without painting "stood on the roof for a hundred years." He was branded with the image of two sables and under the trademark “A. Ya. Siberia”with him made their way to the markets of Western Europe and North America. Iron from the Verkh-Isetsky plant was even used in the roof of the British Parliament. After the famous Moscow fire of 1812, the roofs of the buildings of the restored city were again covered with Verkh-Iset iron.
Zotov also demonstrated himself as an innovator. In 1811, a note was circulated in the Cabinet of Ministers, in which it was noted that the manager of the iron-smelting factories of the landowner Yakovlev Zotov had invented a machine with which you can polish cannonballs. This treatment contributed to an increase in the firing range of artillery pieces. Colonel Bikbulatov, who received the cannon balls, insisted on the introduction of similar devices at other Ural factories. However, it turned out that at the Kushva plant there is a more perfect mechanism for polishing cannonballs, which, moreover, was designed and implemented before the Zotov one. Therefore, Zotov was not recognized as the inventor of polishing machines, but for his zeal he was awarded a medal with the inscription: "For diligence."
Gold mines
For the merits of Grigory Fedotovich to the owners of the Verkh-Isetsky plant, his son Alexander received his freedom. Over time, this fact allowed Alexander Zotov to marry the daughter of a wealthy merchant and breeder Lev Ivanovich Rastorguev. Common faith also contributed to the union of the two families. The bride's father was one of the leaders of the local Old Believer community. Rastorguev bought up the Ural factories, including the Kyshtym and Kaslinsky, until a whole factory district was in his hands.
Grigory Zotov continued to grow both creatively and in his career. In 1820 he visited Prussia. During the trip, I got acquainted with the work of German foundries. The castings he brought from there as samples, along with the achievements of the bronze casting workshop of the Verkh-Isetsky plant, made it possible to lay the foundation for a new artistic craft. Zotov located at the Kasli plant a production of art casting, which, thanks to its high quality with clear lines and an indescribable play of glare, became famous throughout Russia. When Lev Rastorguev died three years later, the factories were inherited by his wife Anna Fedotovna and daughters: Ekaterina Zotova, daughter-in-law of Grigory Fedotovich, and Maria Kharitonova. The heirs unanimously transferred the management of the factories to Grigory Zotov.
The Rastorguev factories went to Zotov not in the best condition. The tyranny of salesmen, non-payment of salaries and famine years led to the largest uprising of the working people in the 19th century in the Urals, which had to be pacified by a military team of up to 3 thousand soldiers. At the same time, the Kyshtym mountain district experienced an upsurge due to the discovery of gold deposits there. In the floodplain of the Sak-Elga river, gold-bearing placers were discovered, and Grigory Zotov founded a settlement there, called the Soimonov mine.
Gold mining was carried out in difficult conditions in two shifts of 12 hours. They fed the people living in cramped barracks and dugouts with bread alone, and for any offense they beat them with sticks or flogged them with a whip. However, the revenues from the mines allowed the factories to be put in order. The quality of the smelted iron and cast iron has improved, the volume of products has increased.
In the fall of 1824, Emperor Alexander I visited the Urals. He, in particular, visited the Verkh-Isetsky plant, which made the best impression on him. He especially liked the factory hospital. When Alexander 1 asked to whom the plant owed its prosperity, the Yekaterinburg police chief replied that the former factory foreman Grigory Zotov had been in charge of the business for more than 20 years. The manager was introduced to the emperor, and an hour and a half conversation took place between them. During this time, Alexander I, according to him, learned much more about the state of mining in the Urals than during his entire previous trip.
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Fiend Dungeons
The authorities began to look closely at the situation at the Kyshtym factories even under Rastorguev. And then, back in 1826, riots took place at the Soimonov mines, which went down in history as a "girl's riot". In the capital, they started talking about Zotov's involvement in hiding part of the gold mined. In addition, the new Tsar Nicholas I did not like the Old Believers, seeing in their communities centers of disobedience to the autocratic power. State supervision was introduced at the Kyshtym factories; investigators came from the capital several times.
And then it turned out that the estates of the Rastorguevs in Yekaterinburg and Kyshtym had extensive dungeons. In the Yekaterinburg estate, the dungeons were in two tiers. They were notorious in the district: these floors served as a prison for obstinate workers and a secret prayer room for sectarian schismatics, adherents of forbidden fanatical sects. The mentor fathers came there by secret paths. The reprisals against the unwanted were short. The basements of the palace were located below the level of the neighboring pond, and it was worth opening the dam so that the basements were flooded with water, drowning the disobedient ones. The Kyshtym mansion looked like a fortress. Before him towered two watchtowers - the southern and northern, adjacent to the stone fence of the machine-building plant. One of them was 20 meters high, and the unfortunate serfs were tortured in it. There were rumors that Grigory Zotov personally killed the unfortunate,walked around the factory with loaded pistols and shot at the disobedient. Even the bodies of those tortured to death were not given to their relatives, but were thrown into a nearby pond.
The tsar's adjutant wing, sent as another investigator, Count Stroganov ordered to drain the factory pond, and on its muddy bottom there were indeed many human bones and corpses that had not yet decayed, sewn into sackcloth coolies.
Zotov was placed under house arrest, his business papers were sealed and subjected to a detailed study. Stroganov personally interviewed the witnesses. In his report, the count noted that Zotov significantly increased the production of gold and improved the smelting of iron not so much by setting up new machines and special means, but by a disproportionate increase in work, cruelty and tyranny. The conditions in which people had to live in factories were compared to the situation of convicts and blacks.
Zotov was under investigation for almost 10 years, all the time delaying it with the help of appeals, health complaints and other tricks. Only when the Minister of Internal Affairs personally took up the matter, in 1837 the case went to trial, and Grigory Zotov was sent into exile in the Finnish city of Köxholm. Apparently, there he died at the beginning of the next decade. In Kyshtym, for a long time, it was rumored that screams and groans could be heard from the dungeons of his estate, and someone even saw ghosts there. Already in 2003, local diggers discovered a hole in the basement under the rotten floor of the north tower, and having made their way to a depth of several meters, they stumbled upon a door walled up with old brickwork. Outside the door were terrible torture chambers, typical for prisons of the 18th-19th centuries: common and solitary cells, a punishment cell, a service room for executioners.
Magazine: Mysteries of History, no. 42. Author: Victor Bumagin