Ryabushinsky Family

Ryabushinsky Family, family of wealthy Russian industrialists. Descended from peasants, they successfully invested in textiles, land, and banking in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were prominent in liberal politics prior to the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Mikhayl Y. Ryabushinsky purchased a fabric store in Moscow in 1844 and two years later opened a cloth factory. His sons, Pavel and Vasily Mikhaylovich Ryabushinsky, expanded the business, eventually consolidating their manufacturing facilities at a large complex near Vyshny-Volochek in 1869. In 1900 seven of Pavel’s sons took control of the Kharkov Land Bank and, in 1902, opened their own banking house, extending branches throughout northern and western Russia. In 1912 this institution was reorganized as the Moscow Bank.

The Ryabushinskys were prominent in numerous trade and industrial organizations after the turn of the century. They were hostile to the government and were leaders of the Progressive Party, publishing the newspaper Utro Rossy (“Russia’s Morning”).

Pavel Pavlovich Ryabushinsky (1871–1924), the oldest brother and, from 1894, head of the family’s business concerns, opened the first Russian automotive factory in Moscow in 1916. A staunch supporter of the Russian war effort in World War I, he opposed the Bolsheviks, and Soviet historians claim that he helped organize the Kornilov Rebellion (of 1917) and other anti-Soviet military efforts. After the October Revolution he emigrated to Paris.

Another family member, N.P. Ryabushinsky, subsidized and edited Zolotoye Runo (“Golden Fleece”), a seminal avant-garde arts journal published 1906–09.