Emmanuel Nobel - senior came to Russia, fleeing from creditors. His grandson, Emmanuel Nobel Jr., left Russia to escape the revolution.
Dynamite Prize
Emmanuel Nobel ended up in St. Petersburg not because of a good life. At home, he went bankrupt. And he traded backward Sweden for a more developed Russia.
Here he designed a sea mine and received a patent for it. But he didn't stop there and retrained as a businessman. He founded a plant that carried out orders of the Navy.
Government orders are always beneficial. Nobel is a respectable man, a merchant of the first guild. He transports his family to Petersburg.
During the Crimean War, an English fleet appeared in the Gulf of Finland. Nobel mines the approaches to the Russian capital. One of the mines exploded, and the British abandoned the raid on Petersburg and Kronstadt.
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War is over
The country breathed a sigh of relief. Nobel sighed heavily - there are no more military orders. And he is bankrupt again.
Emmanuel Nobel returns to Sweden. He was followed by the younger sons - Alfred and Emil.
When exactly Alfred left Russia is a question. The Swedes say he left with his father and invented dynamite in Sweden. Some Russian researchers claim that Alfred Nobel invented and tested dynamite in Russia, but domestic bureaucrats delayed granting a patent, so Nobel registered the copyright for dynamite in Sweden.
Receiving big money by inheritance "contributes to the stupefaction of the human race." This is the conclusion reached by the inventor of dynamite. And he decided not to leave an inheritance to his relatives, but instituted the Nobel Prizes.
True, he executed the will stupidly. Abroad, he was challenged. And the Russian branch of the Nobels did not dispute. So it is thanks to our Nobels that this famous prize is awarded every year.
Alfred and Emil left Petersburg, while their older brothers - Robert and Ludwig - remained. Ludwig took over the rescue of the family business in Russia.
Calculated and cold-blooded, he started the business almost from scratch - he rented a mechanical workshop. Then he bought it, and on the spot in the workshop in 1862 a mechanical plant "Ludwig Nobel" (after the revolution - "Russian Diesel") arose.
Like his father, Ludwig was guided by military orders - rifles, shells, mines. In addition, Ludwig Nobel produced machine tools for other arms factories.
Remembering that his father got burned with military orders, Ludwig does not forget about civilian products.
Wars for black gold
The eldest of the brothers - Robert - had an adventurous streak. He was drawn to risky ventures. Let's say, in the kerosene trade - in those years oil lamps were replaced by kerosene lamps. On this trade, Robert got burned. As you can see, this happened quite often with the Nobels.
Father advises Robert to go into another business. Namely, by catching and training young seals. For some reason no one was interested in seals.
In the early 1870s, Robert went to the Caucasus for walnut trees, which were needed for rifle boxes. Having gone to look for trees, he found the Baku oil fields. And with Ludwig's money he bought an oil refinery.
Ludwig also visited Baku and admitted that oil "has a bright future in all respects." In 1879, he became the main shareholder of the Nobel Brothers Oil Production Partnership (abbreviated as BraNobel).
The Nobels' passion for technical inventions came in handy in a new business. They improved the drilling system, built the world's first oil tanker and a tank car for transporting oil by rail. Alfred Nobel from abroad suggested the idea of an oil pipeline.
The partnership has become the largest oil company in Russia. In 1899, half of Russian kerosene was sold by BraNobel. In addition, 17.7% of Russian and 8.6% of world oil production.
The business developed in a highly competitive environment. The Nobels had to fight the world-class "sharks of capitalism".
In the 1870s, there was essentially one player on the world market - John Rockefeller. Its "Standard Oil" has branches all over the world.
Russia buys kerosene from Rockefeller. But then the Nobels appear. And Russia itself begins to export kerosene.
At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, a real oil boom begins. "He who owns the oil rules the world," said the British Admiral Fischer.
At this time, the main oil producers were the United States and Russia, and at one time we even overtook the Americans. And the clashes between Rockefeller and Nobel marked the beginning of the first oil wars in the international arena. Wars, of course, not in the literal sense, but in the economic sense. At one time, the Nobels and the Rockefellers even drew up a plan - to divide the entire world oil market among themselves.
But they also had to fight on the domestic front. In the 1880s, the Parisian bank "Rothschild Brothers" came to Baku and began to crowd out "BraNobel". For many years there was a struggle. As a result, the Rothschilds could not stand it and sold their Baku enterprises to the Anglo-Dutch company Royal Dutch Shell. Now the Nobels are starting a war with the British and the Dutch.
During these years "BraNobel" was led by Ludwig's son, Emmanuel.
Diesel Kings
Emmanuel Nobel already heads a whole concern, in which BraNobel is the parent company. Oil is a profitable business. The prime cost of producing a pood of kerosene is 8.2 kopecks. And it is sold a pood for a ruble on the Russian market and for 35 kopecks on the export market.
0.75 kopecks per pood were spent on wages to workers. “From the technical side - charming, from the humanitarian side - black, black,” - this is how the journalist described Nobel's Baku enterprises.
In St. Petersburg at a mechanical plant - a different picture. This is not Baku, no one will work for a penny. Ludwig Nobel has tolerable working conditions, there are dormitories, hospitals, canteens, libraries, and a school. The salary is paid once a week. On Tuesdays. If Wednesday is a holiday, then after the holiday. So that you don't get drunk to celebrate.
In the late 1890s, Nobel signed a contract with Rudolf Diesel and became the world leader in the production of diesel engines. As always, the Nobels made improvements - their engine was powered by crude oil. In the world it is called "Russian diesel".
The Ludwig Nobel plant produced equipment for BraNobel enterprises. And that, in turn, supplied fuel for diesel engines, which were manufactured by Ludwig Nobel. Convenient production scheme that brought excellent income.
The Nobel holding also included the Alfa-Nobel trading house and the Noblessner joint-stock company. Quite different enterprises: the first made separators for the dairy industry, the second built ships for the Baltic fleet.
Flight from Russia
Emmanuel Nobel, one might say, is an oligarch. Like all oligarchs, he is no stranger to charity. Let's say awards and scholarships are a family tradition. Emmanuel supports her in every possible way, although, of course, not on the same scale as Uncle Alfred.
At the beginning of the 20th century, it was difficult to stay away from politics. Especially in 1905. Especially the owner of a factory in St. Petersburg, where the workers went on strike all year.
However, it was not only the proletarians who defended their revolutionary interests. The industrialists created their own "capitalist trade union" - the St. Petersburg society of factory owners and manufacturers. From 1912 to 1916, Nobel was its chairman. At one time he was also the treasurer of the Octobrist Party.
And then the revolution broke out. Moreover, workers' unrest in Petrograd on February 23, 1917 began on the Vyborg side, where the Nobel factory was the largest enterprise. It was rumored that Emmanuel Ludwigovich almost himself incited the workers to protest, since by that time he had passed into irreconcilable opposition to the weak and helpless tsarist government.
In any case, he gained nothing from the revolution and turned from an oligarch into an emigrant.
In 1920, he made a very good deal: he managed to sell the BraNobel, which had long been nationalized by the Bolsheviks, to Rockefeller for $ 9 million. The American naively believed that the Soviet regime would soon come to an end. Four years later, Rockefeller began receiving oil from Russia. But not mine. Soviet. And for the money.
Emmanuel Nobel at this time quietly lives in Stockholm with his sister Martha. He died in 1932. And the next year, another Russian emigrant, Ivan Bunin, received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Albeit in such a bizarre way, the Nobels' connection with Russia continued.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century № 45 / С (Russian history № 1), Boris Sarpinsky