From the Editor.
All newspapers chronicle misfortunes; no one writes about the happy moments in life. Life is full of bad things; there is far more sadness than joy, but there are also good and beautiful things;
it’s not customary to write about this beautiful side of life…Here, they only publish a portrait of an interesting person—his home, his elegant possessions—and write about his way of life when he dies, is involved in a train crash, or ends up in court! Involvement in public affairs also grants such recognition, but not all interesting people work in that field—there are others as well.
The foreign press—especially in England, the country with the most refined culture—has long since departed from this principle. English newspapers publish not only obituaries, but also articles about joyful births, balls, hunts, and so on.
There is so little joy in life that it would seem necessary to emphasize it and talk about it as much as possible…
It was with these beautiful words—which remain relevant to this day—that the founders of the magazine *Capital and Country Estate: A Magazine of Beautiful Living* addressed their readers in its first issue, dated December 15, 1913.
Initially, 1,500 copies were printed, but there were only 72 subscribers. The success, however, was unprecedented—the print run for the second issue was already 3,000, and a year later, 20,000! And this was despite the fact that the price per issue of the magazine, which was published twice a month, was no small sum. At the very beginning, it was seventy-five kopecks, but it soon rose to one ruble. By way of comparison: an issue of the Kharkiv weekly newspaper *Utro* cost 3 kopecks, while the popular illustrated weekly *Ogonyok* cost 5 kopecks.
This is hardly surprising, since *The Capital and the Estate* was the first and only glossy magazine in the empire at that time devoted to gossip and high society and aimed at the upper echelons of society. To this day, it is considered one of the finest examples of pre-revolutionary periodicals.
Each issue was printed on the finest coated paper using beautiful typefaces and featured rich, full-color illustrations on the cover and a full-color insert inside.
Envious people whispered that the magazine’s founder and editor-in-chief—Vladimir Pimenovich Krymov—had created it to gain entry into “high society.” However, by the time the first issue of *Capital and Country Estates* was published in 1913, Krymov was already a man of considerable means.
Although he was born in 1878 into a very poor Old Believer family, this did not prevent Vladimir Pimenovich from possessing a phenomenal entrepreneurial spirit and leading a remarkable life.
In 1910, he arrived in St. Petersburg, met the publishing magnate A. S. Suvorin, received an invitation to work at *Novoye Vremya*, and soon became not only a regular contributor there but also its commercial director. By 1913, Krymov had grown even wealthier, mainly through the rubber trade from South America.
For us, the value of *Capital and Country Estates* lies in the fact that the magazine serves as a living encyclopedia of life during that era.
Social life was covered in numerous columns:
Sports:
Collecting:
A great deal of attention was paid to advertising expensive products:
It was in Issue No. 26 of *Capitals and Estates* from 1915 that the first color photographic portrait was published in the empire!
Krymov generally paid a great deal of attention to photography—in particular, to photographs of high-society ladies. The magazine published works by St. Petersburg’s finest photographers, A. N. Pavlovich and Y. V. Steinberg.
The “Our Pets” column, in which the ruling elite showcased their four-legged companions to the public, was very popular in the early 20th century—just as it is today.
For Kharkiv enthusiasts of glamour and glitz, there was only one place in our beloved city where they could purchase *The Capital and the Estate*—namely, A. S. Suvorin, located at 1 Yekaterinoslavskaya Street (now Poltavsky Shlyakh).
However, the magazine still devoted most of its attention to the residences of the new and old aristocracy—the country estates.
For this reason, this publication is of immense value to us, the people of Sloboda Ukraine. After all, on its glossy pages—amidst society columns, advertisements for luxury goods, and portraits of socialites—we can see the beauty of our region that has not survived to the present day or has been almost entirely lost.
The magazine paid the authors exceptionally high fees for their articles on estates (with the right to edit and revise them). An experienced photographer was invited and sent to photograph historic “family estates,” their interiors, individual objects—whether historical or artistic—as well as the owners of these estates themselves.
The experts who worked on Krymov were indeed more skilled: Lukomsky wrote articles on architecture, Baron Wrangel and Kondakov on art and exhibitions, Stolpyansky and Gilyarovsky on everyday life, Baron Osten-Drizen and Yevreinov on theater, Braudo wrote about the history of music, and Levinson wrote about auctions.
In April 1917, Vladimir Pimenovich Krymov set out on his round-the-world journey (Japan, the United States). This is what saved him from the grim fate that befell many wealthy and educated citizens of the Russian Empire during the Bolshevik Revolution.
The last combined (89/90) issue of *Capitals and Estates* was published in September 1917. But even half a year later, Vladimir Pimenovich, who was living in Yokohama at the time, would beg editor Lerner to “keep the magazine going until the very end,” saying: “Values such as *Capital and Country Estates* cannot be destroyed… History and art will endure under any political system.”
As a very wealthy man, Krymov purchased real estate in nearly every European country—and not only in Europe; for example, he owned property in Honolulu. He never returned from Japan to the crumbling Russian Empire. But even though he lived comfortably in exile and died at the age of 89 at his villa in Shatou (a suburb of Paris), he never stopped repeating until the end of his days: “The magazine *Capital and Country Estate*—my beloved brainchild, which perished in October 1917… And of all the things I have lost, I regret this publication more than anything else.”
P.S. By the way, I think many of us have encountered the millionaire and creator of the first glossy magazine, even if only in a fictional world. In Mikhail Bulgakov’s brilliant play *The Run*, there is a cynical millionaire named Paramon Ilyich Korzukhin, familiar to many from his role as Yevgeny Alexandrovich Evstigneev in the 1970 film of the same name. It was Vladimir Pimenovich Krymov who served as his prototype.
- About the military pilot school and the airfield in Kharkiv… - 04.11.2020
- Nikanor Savich—A Political Career by Mistake - 13.07.2020
- And once again, about the Cavalry Guards… - 21.01.2020