Savva Timofeyevich Morozov

Savva Timofeyevich Morozov (, , Orekhovo-Zuevo, Bogorodsky Uyezd Moskovskaya Guberniya, Russian Empire – , Cannes, France) was a Russian textile magnate and philanthropist. Established by Savva Vasilyevich Morozov (1770–1862), the Morozov family was the fifth-richest in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. Biography Savva Timofeyevich Morozov came from an Old Believer merchant family which held the hereditary civil rank of honorary citizens. This gave him freedom from conscription, freedom from corporal punishment, and freedom from taxation. He grew up at the Morozov house at Trehsvyatitelskaya Lane 1-3c1 on Ivanovo Hill in the White City, now the boulevards, of Moscow. He attended the nearby gymnasium at Pokrovsky Gates. His family home was the most expensive home in Moscow and its Morozov gardens became a favourite haunt of S. Aksakov, F. Dostoevsky, A. Ostrovsky, L. Tolstoy, and P. Tchaikovsky. He later studied physics and mathematics at Moscow University (1885) where he wrote a study on dye and met Mendeleev. Beginning on 7 January 1885, at 10 o'clock in the morning, textile workers at the Morozov factories in Bogorodsk, especially Orekhovo-Zuyevo, went on strike for several weeks. In 1885–1887 he studied chemistry at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. While in England he studied the structure of the textile industry in Great Britain, especially in Manchester. Savva Morozov married his second-cousin's former wife Zinaida Grigorievna, née Zimin. They hosted lavish parties and balls which many distinguished Russians and Moscovites attended including Savva Mamontov, Botkin, Feodor Chaliapin, Maxim Gorky, Anton Chekhov, Konstantin Stanislavski, Pyotr Boborykin, and others. Olga Knipper recalled one of these balls: "I had to go to the ball at Morozova: I've never seen such luxury and wealth." At the beginning of the twentieth century, Morozov was the largest shareholder of the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) under Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko. During the summer of 1902, with participation of both Ivan Fomin and Alexander Galetsky, Savva funded Schechtel's improvements to the Lianozov-owned theatre built in 1890 at Kamergersky Lane 3 in Tverskoy. The renovations incorporated Anna Golubkina's high-relief plaster of The Wave above the right entrance of the theatre.