Nature's Evil

At this time of unending wars, bureaucratic experience was transmitted from one enemy to another. Peter’s Twelve Colleges, the first experiment in ministerial rule in Russia, were modelled on the Swedish pattern. In 1719 the Berg College, the Russian version of the Bureau of Mines, was set up with the rights of a ministry. Its first president was the Scottish immigrant James (in Russia, Jacob) Bruce, an artilleryman and alchemist. The Saxonian Johann Blüher was the leading expert. During the Northern War with Sweden, Peter I relayed urgent orders to Demidov. The Ural iron was considered the equal of Swedish iron, but Demidov’s cannons cost only half as much. During the war Demidov got the monopoly on supplying cannons, anchors and nails for the Russian Navy. He also obtained the right to export his iron. Demidov used the advanced technology of watermills to provide energy for the blacksmiths’ bellows, hammers and drills. He built dams, canals and sluice gates – the same rivers that provided transportation gave energy for production; just one of his factories, in Barnaul, had fourteen waterwheels that powered twenty different machines. 29 Demidov’s blast furnaces were much taller than the Tula furnaces in central Russia, and five times more productive. And he became fabulously rich from his munitions work. Towards the end of his life he was producing two-thirds of all iron in Russia. He died in Tula in 1725, the same year as his patron, Peter I.

Nikita Demidov had three sons; after their father’s death they were ennobled. According to Nikita’s will, his eldest son, Akinfy, inherited all the factories and estates. The youngest son, Nikita, served in the Berg College and built state factories. The middle son, Grigory, was murdered by his son Ivan, who was executed for the crime. A worthy heir, Akinfy Demidov continued to expand to the east; he opened new factories in the Altai, close to the Chinese border. Copper and rare metals were processed there, and silver was also present. Demidov’s people extracted it from the mine they dug on the Zmeiny (Serpentine) Mountain. The Saxonian Johann Samuel Christiany ran the business. There were rumours that he was minting silver for Demidov without the exchequer’s knowledge; but, unlike his compatriot Justi, he survived. Management skills and the ability to keep secrets were rare talents which both Demidovs possessed in abundance. Running dozens of factories situated in such remote places that letters from them could take years to arrive, they needed a network of people in whom they had complete confidence; the Old Believer community was fundamental to this.

Expanding their mining network across Siberia, delivering silver from the Altai and iron from the Urals to St Petersburg, the Demidovs built new roads, canals and bridges. From 1723, their workers were free from conscription, and their factories were granted the right to buy and sell serfs. However, after the death of Akinfy Demidov in 1745 an investigation began into the silver workings on the Serpentine Mountain in the Altai. But no crime was found, or it was discreetly ignored. The reasons why Christiany did not share the dismal fate of his compatriot Justi were simple: there really was silver in the Serpentine Mountain, and Christiany’s skills were also real. In 1764, in one of these Altai factories, the engineer Ivan Polzunov, a Siberian peasant who had studied in the Urals, built the first steam engine that didn’t depend on a waterwheel. Emancipating the energy of coal from the flow of the river, Polzunov’s engine started the second phase of the global industrial revolution: his steam engine was the first ever that could be installed anywhere, even on the top of a mountain, though it needed a three-storey building.

Like his father before him, Akinfy also had three sons, but he left the business to the youngest, Nikita. The eldest son, Prokofiy, disputed the will, accusing Nikita of the heresy of Old Belief. The empress Elizabeth I personally supported Prokofiy; the Demidov empire was split, and the sons received equal shares. Prokofiy worked as a botanist, helped the poor and founded a bank, but he was mostly known for his various eccentricities; in 1778 he organised a public festivity in St Petersburg, and for some reason hundreds of people died from drinking wine there. The other sons travelled abroad a great deal. Nikita, the youngest son and his father’s favourite, corresponded with Voltaire but took no interest in the mines. Nikita’s son, Nikolay, preferred Tuscany, where he became a noted philanthropist. He bought up property throughout Italy, and there is a square named after him in Florence. His son, Anatoly, married a niece of Napoleon. The ancestral line degenerated from disgraced but industrious Old Believers to high, indolent nobility.

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