Kozma Terentevich Soldatenkov

Born Oct. 10 (22), 1818, in Moscow; died May 19 (June 1), 1901, in Kuntsevo, now within the Moscow city limits. Progressive Russian book publisher; owner of an art gallery.

The son of a merchant, Soldatenkov was a leading textile manufacturer. In the early 1850’s he became closely acquainted with members of the Moscow circle of progressive intelligentsia headed by T. N. Granovskii. In 1856 the publishing house of Soldatenkov and N. M. Shchepkin (the Russian actor’s son) was founded upon N. Kh. Ketcher’s initiative. Representing the interests of the Granovskii circle, which had close ties with A. I. Herzen in the 1850’s, the publishing house was the first “ideological publishing house of the 1860’s.” The books it published included the first edition of the collected works of V. G. Belinskii in 12 volumes, poems by N. A. Nekrasov, N. P. Ogarev, A. I. Polezhaev, and A. V. Kol’tsov, novellas and short stories by D. V. Grigorovich, and A. N. Afanas’ev’s Russian Folktales and Russian Folk Legends.

Soldatenkov ended his partnership with Shchepkin in 1862 and continued publishing independently. He published the first edition of I. S. Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, collections of poetry by A. A. Fet, Ia. P. Polonskii, and S. Ia. Nadson, and works by F. M. Reshetnikov, A. I. Levitov, G. Z. Eliseev, and N. E. Ka-ronin-Petropavlovskii. Soldatenkov also published N. G. Cher-nyshevskii’s Materials for a Biography of N. A. Dobroliubov, books by the historians T. N. Granovskii, I. E. Zabelin, and V. O. Kliuchevskii, and N. I. Ziber’s Essays on Primitive Economic Culture.

Other works issued by Soldatenkov’s publishing house were translations of foreign scientific and scholarly works, mainly dealing with history. These included G. Weber’s General History in Chernyshevskii’s translation, the Universal History compiled under the editorship of E. Lavisse and A. Rambaud, T. Mommsen’s History of Rome, and works on art studies by F. Kugler, M. Carrière, and W. Liibke. Soldatenkov also published the Biblioteka ekonomistov (Library of Economists) series, which included works by A. Smith, D. Ricardo, J. S. Mill, and D. Hume, and such classics of world literature as Homer’s Iliad, Saadi’s Culistan, and Shakespeare’s Dramatic Works.

Soldatenkov began collecting paintings, mainly by Russian artists, in the late 1840’s. His collection contained more than 200 works, including A. A. Ivanov’s largest painting, The Appearance of Christ Before the People, K. P. Briullov’s Bathsheba, P. A. Fedotov’s The Widow, and V. G. Perov’s The Funeral and Tea-drinking in Mytishchy. Soldatenkov bequeathed his art collection and private library (8,000 books and 15,000 journals) to the Rumiantsev Museum. Since 1925 the paintings have been in the collections of the Tret’iakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, and other museums, and the library in the Lenin State Library. The largest hospital in Moscow, the present-day S. P. Botkin Hospital, and a trade school were built with funds contributed by Soldatenkov.