Kostyurin O.

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Last Updated on Wednesday, 05 June 2019 15:12

Orest Fyodorovich Kostyurin (1859 - 1919)

This man played a special role in the formation of the city. He spent almost 40 years living in our region. Orest Fyodorovich Kostyurin... What do we know about his life?

In the church register of the 90-s of XIX century next to the name of O. Kostyushin mostly it was written "nobleman" but there were some corrections: "nobleman Orest" was crossed out and instead "an adviser not having a title" was written. Was it he who asked to make corrections trying to repudiate the title of nobility or it was it made by an order of Tomsk religious consistory? We can only guess.
A son of a clerk from Kherson Governorate Orest Kostyurin happened to get to a small city on the Irtysh River not because of his love for travelling but because he was exiled from Odessa for "propagandism and relations with revolutionary community". Among the most active revolutionaries, sent to West Siberia according to court's decision in October 1883, there was Orest Fyodorovich Kostyurin and Aleksandr Nikolayevich Fyodorov. Those two great people became friends back in the rebellious adolescence and their friendship grew strong and lasted for a lifetime. In many museum sources and monographs dedicated to the history of Ust Kamenogorsk their names are written next to the names of their team-mates E.P. Mikhaelis, V. L. Inkov, I.V. Emelyantsev, B.G.Gerassimov and others.

His elder brother Viktor was a role model for Orest. Viktor was smart and was single-minded and a real truth fighter. He had a revolutionary pseudonym "Alyosha Popovich" not without reason. His life was difficult. A convicted person Viktor Fyodorovich was sent to hard labor in exile and served his sentence in the mines of Transbaikalia. After spending 10 years in hard labor the family of V.Kostyurin (wife and two children) settled in Tobolsk. For a quarter of a century Viktor Fyodorovich was working in Siberia and for Siberia which became Viktor's second home. Together with his wife Mariya Nikolayevna he was publishing "Siberia paper" ("Sibirsky listok") newspaper for 20 years. He was newspaper publisher, editor and news-writer. Our regional newspaper "Semipalatinsk paper" ("Semipalatinsky listok") was published Mariya Kostyurina in the "From Siberia life" ("Iz Sibirskoy zhizni") column many times. It is known that Viktor Fyodorovich visited his mother in Ukraine and went to her funerals. Did the brothers meet each other after all they'd gone through, did they keep in touch?

Till the last day Viktor Fyodorovich was committed to his views and always said with an understandable pride: "Although I wasn't a general in the days of revolution I cannot be excluded from the ranks of revolutionary officers". Orest Fyodorovich followed his brother and became a revolutionary. Being sentenced to exile for five years Orest Fyodorovich arrived in Ust Kamenogorsk at the end of the year 1883. A strong young man almost instantly found the job in the blacksmith shop. Soon he founded his own locksmith and blacksmith shop.

As far back as 1886 Aleksandr Iossifovich Andreyevsky, the chief of police of Ust Kamenogorsk, reported to the governor that Kostyurin had a house, a blacksmith shop and 5 workers - was it acceptable? According to the report the department carried out a special investigation of the blacksmith shop of Orest Fyodorovich. In the course of time locksmith, blacksmith, casting and turning shops developed into a diversified enterprise. His clients were the countrymen of the neighbor villages especially settlers who at the beginning of the XX century surged to Ust Kamenogorsk uyezd (administrative-territorial unit). There's one old photograph where you can see a sign that runs: "Kostyurin's locksmith and blacksmith shop. Salt sell. Plough and iron sell." In the collection of the museum of history beside this photograph there are photographs of the workers of Orest Kostyurin's shops and the names of some of our citizens. In another photograph we see Orrest Fyodorovich himself with the workers. This priceless exhibit was given to the museum by Alevtina Ivanovna Strelets, the resident of Ust Kamenogorsk, who writes a lot about the past of our city and its people. In the faded photograph there's a young man standing in the upper line, right behind the owner. It is Evgeny Mikhailovich Shchepetilnikov (1889-1935) the grandfather of our giver. He worked in the workshop and the store of Kostyurin as a so-called "boy". Alevtina Ivanovna says that Orest Fyodorovich treated a red-haired boy like his son. When at the age of 19 Evgeny decided to get married the employer presented an amazing gift - Viennese set of furniture. During a hundred years the family owned a lot of different pieces of furniture but there are still pieces of that wedding present - an open-work rocking chair, light bentwood chairs, armchairs and alike sofa. Several generations in this family remember and love Orest Fyodorovich Kostyurin - a whole-souled and kind man.

In 1895 O.Kostyurin was chosen to be not only glasny - the representative of the citizens in the municipal duma, but also gorodskoi golova - the head of the autonomous public bodies of the city. The citizens respected and favored Orest Fyodorovich for his hard work and honesty. He and his companions are known to have done a lot for developing Ust Kamenogorsk and its culture. They initiated the foundation of the library, the park, built buildings of parish school and Marian school, constructed People's House. The city that became home to Orest was getting better. The old-timers of the city call Kostyurin "an original person" and compare him to a famous businessman and fairy godfather Savva Morozov, just of "lower rank".

In 1906 active and vigorous O. Kostyurin was one of the four candidates from Semipalatinsk region for becoming a member of the first State Duma. Orest Fyodorovich voted for Nikolai Konshin who preponderated in the voting. In anxious and conflicting time of the year 1917 Kostyurin still participated in community affairs. In the photograph "Administrative board of the city, 1917" there's a familiar face among glasnys. And in the document dated June 16, 1917 it's written: "the district food committee accords a thank to a dear citizen Orest Fyodorovich Kostyurin for such a largess to the people of the uyezd: three self-rake reapers and one separator to help the citizens of Zarechnaya Sloboda and the uyezd in reaping". Two months later he received another grateful letter: "for a charitable attitude to Sovet's needs expressed in assignation of the accommodation without compensation for Sovet's office and meetings". Apparently the words refer to the cinema theater "Echo" ("Ekho") built on O.Kostyurin's money.

Orest Fyodorovich received love, understanding and support not only from his friends and companions but also from his family.

On August 24 (Old Style) or on September 5 (New Style), 1890 in the old comfortable Troitskaya church "a son of kollezhsky registrator" Orest Kostyurin and "a daughter of a retired non-commissioned officer" Olga Gerassimova got married. There are no wedding photographs but we can imagine the couple without them: fiance - a strong and handsome man of thirty with a nice small beard, and 25 year-old bride - slim, slight and with a dark plait. The priest Vladimir Sakharov and the old parish clerk Nikita Pushkarev performed the wedding ceremony. From the parish register we learned the names of those who were with a newly married couple at the high-day. The three of the four bailsmen required were exiles - Aleksandr Nikolayevich Fyodorov, Ivan Vassilyevich Emelyantsev and Vassily Loginovich Inkov. Each of them had already decided on an activity that defined their further life. A. Fyodorov had become a famous beekeeper and was known as a senior citizen; I.Emelyantsev had become a gold miner and a merchant. The founder and the owner of the first pharmacy in the city V.Inkov once was called "pharmacy assistant" - people kept calling him so for the rest of his life. When O.Kostyurin married O.Gerassimova he got in-laws. Olga Georgiyevna (more often they called her Olga Egorovna) had five brothers. Three of them became churchmen; a lot is written about Boris Gerassimov, the youngest of the brothers, a famous regional ethnographer, scientist and public figure. Apparently the brothers did not approve the sister's decision to marry a man whose lag was over about a year ago. But the fiance had also sisters: Feodossiya, Elizaveta and Aleksandra. They supported Olga and were on friendly terms.

How many children did Orest Fyodorovich have? According to the museum sources he had a son named Viktor. The son continued his father's business. He studied in Germany, returned to Ust Kamenogorsk and began to work as an engineer. According to old-timers, he took part in engineering the "Echo" ("Ekho") cinema. At a mature age Viktor proudly called himself a mechanic engineer. There's a book with the ex-libris of "mechanic engineer Viktor Orestovich Kostyurin" in the personal library of Ust Kamenogorsk citizen. When the father died and the workshop was plundered during the civil war the son tried to reopen it...

Viktor was the only son and in 1893 a girl baptized like her mother Olga was born. The second daughter born in September 1894 was baptized Agafya: in 1898 Nadezhda was born. The youngest in the family Lyubasha who came into the world in 1902 did not live long: in 1904 many people died of scarlet fever in Ust Kamenogorsk.

Orest Fyodorovich himself lived 60 years which according to nowadays life expectancy is not so long. He died in November 1919. Till the last days of his life he was an example of hard work and eternal honesty in everything. He was a man of enterprise and decency; he was a talented organizer and a democratic man, he had a good sense and a kind heart.