12 gambs chair!

At the beginning of the XX century in the city of Elabuga on the river Kama lived 10,000 inhabitants, of which more than 600 merchants, including 12 millionaires. The merchant dynasty of the Stakheevs is rightfully considered one of the most famous in the XIX – early XX century in all of Russia. In 1914, the Stakheyevs were included in the list of the 30 richest people in Russia. During the First World War in 1914, Nikolai Dmitrievich Stakheev, evaluating the situation in Russia and in the world, decides to move to France in order to save his huge fortune. However, he hides part of it in the caches of his Moscow mansion on New Basmannaya Street. As a player and a man accustomed to living on a broad footing, Stakheev eventually lost in Europe.

This incredible story happened in the mid-1920s. Incognito from emigration comes to Moscow former gold miner Nikolai Stakheev, one of the richest people in Russia. At night, Stakheev secretly enters his former house, opens a cache, and then he is caught by the new owners of this house - railway workers. They want to shoot according to the laws of wartime, but Stakheev, possessing a unique gift of a negotiator, gets an appointment with Felix Dzerzhinsky himself. The next day he went back to Paris. Perhaps his treasure was the price of his newfound freedom? Information about this case suddenly leaked to the press, including the journalists of the newspaper “Gudok” Ilf and Petrov. So the idea of “12 chairs” appeared, and some researchers believe that it was Stakheev who became the prototype of Kisa Vorobyaninov.

Excursion "The merchant city of Elabuga".