Catherine's foreign policy 2 questions. Political reforms in the counties

IVAN VLADIMIROVICH Michurin (1855-1935)

Russian breeder *, gardener-geneticist

“As I remember myself, I was always and completely absorbed in only one desire for occupations to grow certain plants, and such a passion was so strong that I almost did not even notice many other details of life.”

Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin

* Breeder- a scientist engaged in crossing plants in order to obtain new varieties.

Ivan Vladimirovich was born in Ryazan region, near the village of Dolgoe, in the family of a small nobleman.

After graduating from the Pronsk district school, Michurin entered the Ryazan gymnasium, but did not stay there for long due to the ruin of the family - there was nothing to pay for his studies. Therefore, young Michurin began working at the railway station. Studied telegraph, signaling devices, repaired them. Then Michurin became interested in watchmaking and opened his own watch repair shop.

At the age of 20, Ivan Michurin created a plant nursery in the city of Kozlov, Tambov region, and devoted his life to creating new varieties of garden plants.

Even at the very beginning of gardeningIvan Vladimirovichvisited many gardens of Ryazan, Tula, Kaluga regions and became convinced that old Russian varieties, due to diseases and pests, gave insignificant yields, and imported southern plants did not adapt well to our climate - frost, rains, rare sun.

A threat has arisen - Russian varieties will degenerate, and the imported ones will not take root - the Russians will have to buy expensive imported apples and pears.

"It was impossible to repeat the mistakes of the former gardeners, who in vain hoped to acclimatize foreign varieties. We need to develop new, improved, hardy varieties for each separate area!" , - wrote I. V. Michurin.

In Michurin's work, fifteen fruit and berry crops, several dozen botanical species were involved. In his nursery, he collected a unique collection of plants from different locations. the globe- from Of the Far East, Caucasus, Tibet, from China, Canada and other countries. All these plants Michurin began to cross with the aim of breeding new Russian varieties!

In 1913 Michurin received an offer to move to work and live in America and sell his collection, he refused.

Michurin's achievements: the scientist brought out about 30 new varieties of roses, as well as violet lily bulbs (the flower looks like a lily, and smells like a violet), 48 varieties of apple trees, 15 varieties of pears and 33 varieties of cherries and cherries, several varieties of plums.Ivan Vladimirovich tHe also brought out varieties of grapes, apricots, blackberries, currants adapted to the conditions of Central Russia. More than 300 varieties of different plants in total!

All his life, Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin kept working diaries, in which he described and analyzed his work.

Michurin's diaries contain many specific recipes for all occasions in the garden's life, which are still relevant today.

1. Trees and shrubs bought in the fall, but not planted, must be dug in (planted in a specially designated place where water does not stagnate).

2. To scare away rodents, planted trees are coated with some odorous substances. Do not apply kerosene, lard, tar, oils directly to the bark. It is necessary to apply these compounds to thick paper, straw and tie them around.

For outstanding achievements in breeding, Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin was awarded the Russian government Order of St. Anne.

Michurin died on June 7, 1935, and was buried at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.

Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin's contribution to Russian and world gardening is so great that his name has become a household name. If they say about someone: "Well, he is straight, Michurin!", Then it is immediately clear that the person is a noble gardener.

Today many streets and squares of Russia are named after Michurin:
village Michurovka in the Ryazan region, railway platform Michurinets , Michurinsky prospect in Moscow, Michurin square in Ryazan. Michurin Street is located in Belgorod, Volodarsk, Voronezh, Kemerovo, Samara, Saratov, Saransk, Tomsk, and in other cities. There is even a lake and a village in Karelia named after Michurin!

About Michurin removed Feature Film which even on Chinese translated, because Michurin is known in China too!

But the clearest signRussians' love for Michurin - a lot of folk jokes and cartoons about this outstanding breeder!

Anecdotes about Michurin

***
Who Invented Barbed Wire? Michurin. He crossed a snake and a hedgehog.

***
Michurin crossed a watermelon with flies so that the seeds would fly out on their own.

***
Michurin crossed a pumpkin with a cherry to make the hybrid taste like a berry and the size of a vegetable. The opposite happened.

A poorly sighted man looks for a long time at a tree, in the foliage of which an electric light is shining: "Well, Michurin, well, I didn't expect it!"

***
How did Michurin die? I climbed on the poplar for dill, where it was filled with watermelons.

Caricature for Twilight Book and Movie Lovers:

Who did not understand - in the garden CHESNOOOOOK !!!

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Now you understand why like these ones photos are posted on the Internet with a signature "Michurin's Dream" ?!

The great-grandfather of I.V. Michurin Ivan Naumovich and grandfather Ivan Ivanovich Michurin were small-land nobles and participants Patriotic War 1812 IV Michurin continued the family tradition, since not only his father, Vladimir Ivanovich, but also his grandfather, Ivan Ivanovich, as well as his great-grandfather, Ivan Naumovich, were keenly interested in gardening and collected a rich collection of fruit trees and a library of agricultural literature.

IV Michurin's father, Vladimir Ivanovich, received a home education. He served at the Tula Arms Factory. Peter the Great as the receiver of weapons. He retired with the rank of provincial secretary, and settled in his estate "Vershina" (near the village of Yumashevka, Pronsky district, Ryazan province), where he was engaged in gardening and beekeeping. He was associated with the Free Economic Society, from which he received literature and agricultural seeds. In winter and autumn, Vladimir Ivanovich taught peasant children to read and write at home.

V. B. Govorukhina and L. P. Peregudova argue that Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin was born the seventh child in a row, and his brothers and sisters died as children.

Mother Maria Petrovna, who was in poor health, fell ill with a fever and died at the age of thirty-three, when IV Michurin was four years old.

The boy worked with his father in the garden, apiary, planting and vaccinations. At the age of eight, he perfectly knew how to make budding, copulating and ablating plants.

In childhood, except for the rare excursions to the ruins of the Tatar fortress in the vicinity of Yumashevka, he was often seen in the garden and by the pond, in fishing, he stood out from his peers with a passionate love for classes with plants.

He studied first at home, and then at the Pronsk district school of the Ryazan province, devoting his free and vacation time to work in the garden. On June 19, 1872, he graduated from the Pronsk district school, after which his father prepared his son at the gymnasium course for admission to the St. Petersburg Lyceum.

At this time, my father suddenly fell ill. N. A. Makarova claims that he was damaged by reason and was being treated in Ryazan.

The estate was mortgaged and paid for debts. His uncle, Lev Ivanovich, helped Michurin decide on the Ryazan provincial gymnasium. An aunt experiencing financial difficulties, Tatyana Ivanovna, who was also enthusiastically engaged in gardening, took care of Ivan Vladimirovich.

Michurin was expelled from the gymnasium in 1872 for "disrespect to his superiors." A. N. Bakharev, in a biographical note in Michurin's book, argues that the reason for the expulsion was the case when, while greeting the headmaster of the gymnasium on the street, the gymnasium student Michurin “due to severe frost and ear disease did not have time to take off his hats in front of him,” while The real reason, he says, is the refusal of his uncle, Lev Ivanovich, to bribe the headmaster of the Orange school.

In 1872 Michurin moved to Kozlov (later Michurinsk), whose neighborhood he did not leave for a long time almost until the end of his life.

At the end of 1872, I.V. Michurin received a job as a commercial clerk in the commodity office of Kozlov station (Ryazan-Ural railway, later - Michurinsk station, Moscow-Ryazanskaya railroad), with a salary of 12 rubles a month and a 16-hour working day.

In 1874 Michurin took the position of a commodity cashier, and then one of the assistants to the head of the same station. According to the biographer A. Bakharev, Michurin lost the post of assistant to the station chief due to a conflict ("caustic mockery") with the station chief Everling.

From 1876 to 1889 Michurin was a clock and signaling apparatus fitter on the section of the Kozlov-Lebedyan railway.

In 1874 he married Alexandra Vasilievna Petrushina, the daughter of a distillery worker.

Lacking funds, Michurin opened a watch workshop in the city, at his apartment. According to A. Bakharev, “upon returning from duty Michurin had to sit long after midnight, fixing watches and repairing various devices”.

Free time I. V. Michurin devoted to the work on the creation of new varieties of fruit and berry crops.

In 1875, he rented an empty city ​​manor in the vicinity of Kozlov with an area of ​​130 sq. fathoms (about 500 square meters) "with a small part of the neglected garden", where he began to conduct experiments on plant breeding. There he collected a collection of fruit and berry plants in more than 600 species. "Soon the estate I rented," he wrote, "was so overflowing with plants that there was no further possibility of doing business on it."

In early autumn Michurin moved to an apartment in the Lebedevs' house, on Moskovskaya Street, with a manor and a garden. According to a contemporary of Michurin, I.A.Gorbunov, two years later Michurin acquired this house with a manor with the help of a bank, which he immediately mortgaged due to lack of funds and large debts for 18 years. On this estate Michurin bred the first varieties: raspberry Commerce (Colossal Schaefer seedling), Griot pear-shaped cherry, Small-leaved semi-dwarf cherry, Fertile and interspecific hybrid cherry variety Krasa Severa (Vladimirskaya early cherry? Winkler white cherry). Here he transferred the entire collection of garden plants from the Gorbunovs' estate. But after a few years this estate also turned out to be overflowing with plants.

In the early autumn of 1887 Michurin learned that the priest of the suburban settlement of Panskoye, Yastrebov, was selling a plot of land seven kilometers from the city near the settlement of Turmasovo, near the Kruch, on the banks of the Lesnoy Voronezh River. Of the 12 1/2 dessiatines (about 13.15 hectares) of the plot, only half could go into business, since the other half was under the river, a precipice, bushes and other inconveniences, however Michurin was very pleased with the plot. Due to lack of funds, the deal was delayed until February 1888. A. Bakharev claims that “All autumn and most of the winter of 1887-1888. went to feverish raising money with unbearable, reaching exhaustion, work. " On May 26, 1888, the purchase of land took place, after which Michurin had 7 rubles and large debts under the mortgage of half of the land. Due to a lack of funds, the Michurin family members carried plants from the city plot 7 km away on their shoulders. Since there was no home on the new site, they walked 14 km and lived in a hut for two seasons. Michurin was forced to continue working as a fitter for another year. Since 1888, this site near the Turmasovo settlement has become one of the first breeding nurseries in Russia. Subsequently, it is the central estate of the state farm-garden named after IV Michurin, with an area of ​​2500 hectares of gardens with Michurin assortment.

In 1893-1896, when the nursery in Turmasovo already had thousands of hybrid seedlings of plum, sweet cherry, apricot and grape, Michurin became convinced of the failure of the method of acclimatization by grafting, and concludes that the soil of the nursery - a powerful black soil - is fat and “ spoils "hybrids, making them less resistant to the devastating" Russian winter "for thermophilic varieties.

In 1900 Michurin transferred the plantings to a plot with poorer soils "to ensure the 'Spartan' education of hybrids."

In 1906, the first scientific work IV Michurin, dedicated to the problems of breeding new varieties of fruit trees.

In 1912 he was awarded the Order of St. Anne, 3rd degree.

In 1913 Michurin turned down an offer from the US Department of Agriculture to move to America or sell his plant collection. However, there is information that indicates that initially Michurin considered the possibility of selling his collection to the Americans. In particular, he wrote about this to the Russian gardener A.D. Voeikov. It is possible that the implementation of these plans was prevented by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

In the summer of 1915, during the First World War, a cholera epidemic raged in Kozlov. That year, Michurin's wife, Alexandra Vasilievna, died.

In the same year, an abundant flood in early spring flooded the nursery, after which severe frosts and a decline in water ice destroyed the school of two-year-olds intended for sale. This killed many hybrids.

However, during the war years Michurin found confirmation of a number of his judgments and views on the law of inheritance in plants, the method of breeding varieties. This kept Michurin at the same level of his activity, allowing Ivan Vladimirovich to suppress his personal grief. Almost every issue of Progressive Horticulture and Horticulture began with Michurin's editorial. During this period, many hybrids began to bear fruit: "bellefleur"? "Chinese"; "Antonovka"? "Nedzvetsky's apple tree"; "White winter calvil"? "Chinese"; "Pineapple renaissance"? "Chinese"; "Ussuriyskaya pear"? "Take a dil"; "Ussuriyskaya"? "Bere Garnish Garnitsky"; "Take Ligel"? “Seedling of bergamot” and others. The first fruiting of actinidia “kolomikta” and the first flowering of the lily “violet” and other hybrids belong to this time.

In 1916, a student circle of gardening lovers at the Petrovsk Agricultural Academy asked Michurin if his major work on the breeding of new varieties of fruit plants had come out of print. Michurin, however, complained about the lack of funds and personnel for the scientific processing of the accumulated material.

Before the revolution, Michurin's nursery had more than 900 varieties of plants from the USA, France, Germany, Japan and other countries.

Michurin's activities in the period after the 1917 revolution

Without leaving his nursery during the entire period of the February Revolution of 1917, the very day after the October Revolution of 1917, despite the continuing shooting in the streets, Michurin appeared at the newly organized county land department, where he met with the former farm laborer Dedov, the commissar of the land department - and told him: "I want to work for the new government." The latter ordered on the same day to convene a meeting of the board on Michurin's case, promised to inform the People's Commissariat of Land and suggested that the Land Committee of the Donskoy Sloboda take measures to protect the nursery. Dedov provided Michurin and his family with material assistance and food assistance.

In 1934, a genetic laboratory was created on the basis of Michurin's nursery, at present it is the All-Russian Research Institute of Genetics and Breeding of Fruit Plants named after V.I. I. V. Michurina (VNIIG and SPR RAAS), is engaged in the development of methods for breeding new varieties of fruit crops, breeding work... As a result of the fruitful activity of the scientist, the city of Michurinsk turned into an all-Russian center of horticulture; Michurina, Michurin State Agrarian University. Michurinsky district has large fruit nurseries and fruit growing farms.

On June 29, 1918, the Collegium of the Kozlovsky district commissariat of agriculture, having studied Michurin's nursery, at its meeting adopted a resolution on its nationalization:

November 22, 1918 People's Commissariat Agriculture took over the nursery, approving IV Michurin in the position of its head with the right to invite personnel for a broader organization of the case.

By the spring of 1919, the number of experiments in Michurin's garden had increased to several hundred. At the same time, Michurin took part in the agronomic work of the People's Commissariat for Agriculture, advised specialists Agriculture on breeding, drought control, raising yields, attended local agronomic meetings.

In his 1919 article Michurin called on agronomists to work for the benefit of the new social order:

In these and subsequent years Michurin wrote repeatedly:

Due to a misunderstanding of its meaning, the phrase became a symbol of the consumer attitude towards nature.

By 1920, Michurin had developed over 150 new hybrid varieties, among which were: apple trees - 45 varieties, pears - 20, cherries - 13, plums (among them three varieties of renklods) - 15, cherries - 6, gooseberries - 1, strawberries - 1, actinidia - 5, mountain ash - 3, walnut - 3, apricots - 9, almonds - 2, quince - 2, grapes - 8, currants - 6, raspberries - 4, blackberries - 4, mulberries (mulberry) - 2 , walnut (hazelnuts) - 1, tomatoes - 1, lily - 1, white acacia - 1.

In addition to the new hybrid assortment, the nursery had over 800 species of original plant forms collected by Michurin from various parts of the world.

Representatives of the new Michurin assortment, mainly apples, pears, cherries and plums, in the amount of 50,000 trees were purchased between 1888 and 1916 by various amateur farms in 60 provinces.

Most of the varieties were in the nursery in the state of mother trees and did not receive reproduction.

In 1920 Michurin invited to work the agronomist-fruit grower I.S.Gorshkov, who at that time worked in Kozlov as a district gardening specialist and was a follower of Michurin. With the support of local authorities, in January 1921 Gorshkov organized a reproduction department of the nursery on the lands of the former Trinity Monastery, which was located 5 kilometers from the estate and nursery of IV Michurin.

Scientific activity of Michurin

In his autobiography Michurin wrote:

At the age of 45 (1900) Michurin established a strict working regime, which remained unchanged until the end of his life. Getting up at 5 in the morning, Michurin worked until 12 in the nursery with a tea break at 8 in the morning, until half an hour lunch at 12 he again worked in the nursery, after which he spent an hour and a half reading newspapers and viewing special periodicals, an hour on rest. From 3 to 5 Michurin worked in a nursery or a room, depending on the circumstances and the weather, at 9 pm dinner for 20 minutes, until 12 work on correspondence and then sleep. Michurin's room served as an office, a laboratory, a library, a workshop of fine mechanics and optics, and even a smithy (invented tools: pruning shears, haifuses, barometers, an eyepiece machine, etc.) Michurin's equipment was forged and brazed using a furnace of his own design.

Michurin retired to his small estate, refusing to communicate not related to the circle of his professional interests. In particular, he ignored the raznochin and merchant environment of Kozlov at that time. At the same time, his correspondence with gardening correspondents and foreign scientists and the number of visitors to his nursery was constantly increasing.

In the summer of 1912, the office of Nicholas II sent one of its prominent officials, Colonel Salov, to Kozlov to Michurin. The colonel was surprised by the modest appearance of Michurin's estate, which consisted of a brick outbuilding and a wicker barn, as well as the poor clothes of its owner, whom he initially took for a watchman. Salov limited himself to reviewing the plan of the nursery, without going into it, and arguing about the sanctity of "patriotic duty", the slightest deviation from which "borders on sedition." A month and a half later Michurin received two crosses: Anna of the 3rd degree and the Green Cross "for labors in agriculture."

The growing pilgrimage to Michurin's little house and garden and Michurin's complete indifference to the church aroused suspicion among the bourgeoisie and the clergy, and an opinion appeared about him as a harmful arrogant and “freemason”. Protopop Christopher Potapiev, who graduated from the theological academy and was reputed in Kozlov for an intelligent and eloquent preacher, visited Michurin's nursery a month after Salov's departure, and demanded that he stop experiments with crossing plants, which Ivan Vladimirovich later recalled more than once as an amusing incident from his life ... “Your crossings, - said the archpriest, - have a negative effect on the religious and moral thoughts of the Orthodox ... You have turned the garden of God into a house of tolerance!”.

Pages from Michurin's diary

Page with sketches of fruits from IV Michurin's diary. Refers to the period 1899-1904.

Page from IV Michurin's diary with sketches of plum fruits. Refers to the 1900s.

Drawings of I. V. Michurin from his diary

Page from the diary of I. V. Michurin, 1904

Cherry varieties Michurin

Cherry "Beauty of the North"

Cherry "Nadezhda Krupskaya"

Cherry "Fertile Michurina"

Cherry "Polfir"

Cherry "Ultra-fruited"

Cherry "Consumer goods black"

Apple varieties Michurin

Apple-tree "Antonovka six hundred grams"

Apple-tree "Bellefleur-Chinese"

Apple-tree "Bellefleur-Record", below - "Northern Bougebon"

Apple-tree "Kandil-Kitayka", on the left - the fruit of "Kitayka" (mother)

Apple-tree "Kitaika golden early"

Apple tree "Pepin saffron", below - "Renet red banner"

Apple-tree "Saffron-Chinese"

Apple tree "Esaul Ermaka"

Apple tree "Wax"

Pear varieties Michurin

Pear "Bere winter Michurina", below - the fruit of the wild Ussuri pear (mother)

Pear "Sugar substitute"

Pear "Tolstobezhka"

Plum varieties Michurin

Plum "Canning"

Plum "Renklod collective farm"

Plum "Renclode reform"

Turner "Dessert"

Apricot varieties Michurin

Apricot "Best Michurin"

Apricot "Mongol"

Apricot "Satser"

Actinidia

Actinidia "Pineapple Michurina"

Actinidia "Clara Zetkin"

Varieties of other crops Michurin

Rowan "Michurinskaya dessert"

Above - Abundant blackberry, below - Texas raspberry

Gooseberry "Black Moor"

Relations with foreign specialists

In 1896, a representative of the Washington Agricultural Institute, Professor FN Meyer (Frank N. Meyer) first visited IV Michurin, and brought to the United States a collection of Michurin apples, cherries and plums. Comparing the work of Burbank and Michurin, he later stated:

Fruit varieties Michurin were in demand by foreign experts and occupied significant areas in the USA and Canada. In his book "The Results of 60 Years of Work" Michurin wrote:

In 1898, the Pan-Canadian Farmers' Congress, which met after a harsh winter, - according to prof. Saunders, - "stated that all old varieties of cherries of both European and American origin in Canada were frozen, with the exception of Fertile Michurin from Kozlov (in Russia)."

In 1896 Michurin was elected an honorary member of the American scientific society "Breeders", after which, before the revolution, American professors visited him annually.

In 1913, Professor Meyer officially suggested that I.V. Michurin, on behalf of the US Department of Agriculture, move to America and continue to work in Quebec on terms of payment of $ 8,000 a year. Michurin was forced to refuse this offer. As he himself wrote, the reason for the refusal was poor health and already quite respectable age (at that time he was already 58 years old), the duration of the trip and ignorance of English language.

On March 18, 1913, Michurin received a letter from D. Ferchild, Head of the Introduction Department of the US Department of Agriculture, with a proposal to sell the plant collection in part or in full.

Apparently, IV Michurin was quite supportive of this prospect. As early as January 31, 1913, he wrote to the Russian gardener and acclimatizer A. D. Voeikov: “As for the wholesale sale of all new varieties of plants, then, I suppose, it will be possible to come to terms with them (with the Americans. - Wikipedia)”. But these plans were not destined to come true. In 1914, the First began World War.

In 1927, on the initiative of I. Gorshkov, the film "South in Tambov" was released, which promoted Michurin's achievements. The film, in addition to the USSR, was shown abroad (USA, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Italy, the Baltic States).

The film was screened in 1929 at the annual banquet of the scientific gardeners' association in New York. Special botanical journal "The Floriste Exchange" wrote on this subject:

Director of the Soviet Bureau of Agricultural Information in the United States, Professor I.A.Mirtov, sending I.V. Michurin reviews from American special magazines on this film, wrote:

Contribution to science

He developed methods of breeding fruit and berry plants by the method of distant hybridization (selection of parental pairs, overcoming non-breeding, etc.).

Named after I. V. Michurin

• Plant species: Aronia mitschurinii A.K. Skvortsov & Maitul. (1982) - Aronia Michurina, or Chokeberry
• Settlements:
  • In 1932, the city of Kozlov, even during the life of Ivan Vladimirovich, was renamed Michurinsk.
  • In 1968, the construction workers' settlement of the Ryazan State District Power Plant was named Novomichurinsk.
  • The village of Michurovka in the Pronsky district of the Ryazan region is named after his ancestors, the former owners of the village.
• State farm named after Michurin in the Novosibirsk region Novosibirsk region.
• State Farm named after Michurin in the Michurinsky district of the Tambov region.
• Village Michurino in Kazakhstan, Astana.
• Celo Michurino, Drochievsky district in Moldova.
• Agricultural educational institutions:
  • Agricultural College named after IV Michurin in Michurinsk, Tambov region, which was founded on the initiative of the breeder.
  • Agrarian University them. Michurin in Michurinsk, Tambov region.
• State farm-technical school named after Michurin, Kazakhstan, Karaganda region, Abay district.
• Agricultural research institutions:
  • Central genetic laboratory named after IV Michurin in Michurinsk, Tambov region.
  • All-Russian Institute of Genetics and Breeding of Fruit Plants named after V.I. I. V. Michurina (VNIIGiSPR).
  • All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Horticulture named after Michurin in Michurinsk, Tambov region.
• Many streets and squares in different cities of the world, namely Michurin's street and collective farm in Mikhailovka (Mikhailovsky district, Zaporozhye region, Ukraine).
• A lake and a village in the Priozersky district of the Leningrad region.

Michurin in philately

• Postage stamps of the USSR

1949, 40 kopecks denomination

1949, 1 ruble denomination

1956, 25 kopecks denomination

1956, Michurin among the pioneers.

1956, 1 ruble denomination

Essays

• Michurin I. V. Works in 4 volumes. - M .: OGIZ: SELHOZGIZ, 1948.

Gardener, breeder.

Born on October 15, 1855 in the village of Dolgoe, Pronsky district, Ryazan province, in the family of an impoverished nobleman. Both grandfather and father Michurin were engaged in gardening, Michurin himself early felt a craving for the earth, for plants. “As I remember myself,” he wrote later, “I was always and completely absorbed in only one desire for occupations to grow these or those plants, and such a passion was so strong that I almost did not even notice many other details of life: they seemed to everyone passed by and left almost no trace in their memory. "

After graduating from the Pronskoe district school, he entered the Ryazan gymnasium, but was soon expelled from it - for disrespect to the authorities.

In 1872 he got a job as a clerk at a freight station in the city of Kozlov.

Despite the hard work, he tried gardening on a tiny piece of land. I had to do absolutely everything with my own hands, but Michurin liked this kind of life. Only material hardships forced him to leave the site. In 1875 he moved to the city of Ryazhsk, where he began working as a clerk at a railway station. However, the dream of gardening did not let him go, and in 1877 Michurin returned to Kozlov. Here he worked as a duty officer, monitoring the health of clocks and signaling devices on the section of the Kozlov-Lebedyan railway. Constant traveling allowed Michurin to study well the gardening of the central part of European Russia. Oddly enough, it was during these years that Michurin came to the well-known opinion that a person should do a lot. better than nature.

In 1875 Michurin rented a small empty estate.

Very soon in his collection there were more than six hundred species of fruit trees and shrubs. The plot became too small for work, and in 1882 Michurin rented another, larger plot, where he transferred all his plants. Already on this site Michurin bred such well-known varieties as raspberry "commerce", cherry "griot pear-shaped", "small-leaved semi-dwarf", "fertile", and an unusual interspecific hybrid "beauty of the north".

In 1888, seven kilometers from the city, near the Turmasovo settlement, Michurin finally acquired a fairly extensive area. He began his research with improving and replenishing the assortment of fruit plants in the central and northern parts of Russia. Fascinated by the ideas of acclimatization, in his first experiments he used the methods promoted at that time by the famous Moscow gardener Dr. A.K. Grell, that is, he sought to change the heredity of southern varieties of fruit plants, primarily by grafting their cuttings into the crown of an adult tree of a local variety or cold-resistant wild. However, after a few years Michurin came to the conclusion that Grell's methods were untenable, since all plants grafted in this way died in the harsh winters. Michurin even published a special article "How is the acclimatization of plants possible?", In which he revealed the fallacy of Grelle's methods. Any thermophilic variety that did not have the ability to withstand low temperatures in its homeland, he pointed out in this article, cannot adapt to them in new climatic conditions... If acclimatization is carried out by transferring plants, cuttings, cuttings, etc., the plants will necessarily die or degenerate.

Continuing the experiments begun, Michurin came to the conclusion that successful acclimatization of plants is possible only if the plants are transferred to the north. So, using connections with amateur gardeners in a number of provinces, he created the "northern apricot" and cherry "first swallow".

“… At the beginning of my work,” Michurin wrote, “I myself had to endure great losses of wasted labor for several years. Hybrid seedlings from crossing the best foreign varieties with local, frost-tolerant varieties grown on ridges with rich, fertilized and deeply cultivated soil, froze out during the first two or three winters. And only at the end of the 80s, by chance, the end of one of the sowing ridges turned out to be with very thin sandy soil, and a dozen hybrid seedlings that grew on it turned out to be frost-resistant. I noticed this at that time, which seemed to me a paradoxical phenomenon. How did the weaker seedlings turn out to be hardy, while the strong died? "

However, this path of acclimatization took time.

A long-term search for the best ways to promote fruit crops to the north led Michurin to a method of hybridization of geographically distant forms, to interspecific and intergeneric hybridization in combination with the systematic education of parental forms before crossing, and with the subsequent education of the best selected hybrid seedlings.

Michurin formulated his views on distant hybridization in 1913 in the article "Promoting hybridization provides a more reliable way of acclimatization."

To obtain new varieties of fruit and berry plants Michurin widely used distant hybridization.

He discovered this method himself.

And not only discovered, but also developed, realizing its prospects in time.

It is required, for example, to obtain a frost-resistant pear, proceeding from the gentle cultivar “Bere-Royal”. It would seem that it is necessary to cross the cultivar with the local pear, which is found in the wild right there near Kozlov. However, Michurin took a wild pear not at all the one that grew near Kozlov. He took a wild pear from a very remote area, for example, from the Ussuri region. The local wild pear, he believed, is so well adapted to its local climate that, when crossed with a cultivated variety, it will not only transmit its frost resistance in the offspring, but also suppress all other valuable cultural qualities of the pear "bere-grand". "The further apart the pairs of crossed parent plants are in the place of their homeland and the conditions of their labor," wrote Michurin, "the easier it is for the hybrid seedlings to adapt to the environmental conditions in the new locality."

Parallel to this, Michurin used the hybridization of plants that were quite distant and in their systematic relationship, that is, he crossed among themselves a variety of species and even genera, for example, cherry and bird cherry, peach and almond, pear and quince. With such a crossing, the hereditary systems of the plant in the process of forming offspring are deeply rearranged and acquire a particularly mobile flexible character. There are many strong hereditary deviations, among which you can choose the most valuable for practice.

Having accumulated thousands of hybrid seedlings, Michurin came to the conclusion that in order to develop varieties that are more resistant to frost, it is necessary to transfer experiments to a plot with poorer soils. For this, he acquired a plot in the Donskoy Sloboda near Kozlov, with alluvial sandy loam soil. By 1900, he had transferred all his seedlings there. And here he worked until his death.

Michurin repeatedly offered the Department of Agriculture to take experimental site... You should have at least one government agency, where it would be possible to carry out work on hybridization, he pointed out. But the officials remained indifferent, and the representatives of the scientific world, whom Michurin did not at all in vain called the caste priests of boltology, treated Michurin condescendingly at best.

However, Michurin has always worked for.

In 1911 and 1913, for example, he flatly refused lucrative offers from representatives of the US Department of Agriculture to move to continue his work in America or sell his collections to Americans. The Americans offered Michurin a separate steamer from Vindava to Washington for transporting seedlings and a salary of $ 8,000 a year. The interest in Michurin, shown by foreign experts, was so noticeable that the Russian government urgently awarded Michurin 3rd degree - for "merits in the agricultural field."

“… My whole road to the revolution,” wrote Michurin, “was lined with ridicule, neglect, oblivion. Before the revolution, my hearing was always offended by an ignorant judgment about the uselessness of my works, that all my works are “inventions”, “nonsense”. Officials from the department shouted at me: "Don't you dare!" State scientists declared my hybrids "illegitimate". The priests threatened: “Do not blaspheme! Do not turn the garden of God into a house of tolerance! "(This is how hybridization was characterized by them)."

After the revolution Michurin himself appeared at the county land department and declared his firm desire to work for the new government.

Michurin was not mistaken, he was supported.

“Due to the fact that Michurin's fruit nursery near the Donskoy Sloboda in the amount of 9 dessiatines, according to the documentary information available in the Commissariat, is the only one in Russia for the brood of new varieties of fruit plants, - said in a special decision adopted by the Commissariat of Agriculture, - to recognize the nursery as inviolable, leaving it is temporary, pending its transfer to the jurisdiction of the Central Committee, behind the uyezd Commissariat, about which to notify the corresponding volost and local councils. Michurin should be granted the right to use the nursery in the amount of 9 dessiatines and asked to continue his work, useful to the state, at his own discretion. To issue an allowance in the amount of 3,000 rubles for the production of work ”.

All-Union headman MI Kalinin visited Michurin several times in Kozlov. Academician N.I. Vavilov, through the Administrator of the Council of People's Commissars N.P. Gorbunov, informed Lenin about the importance of the work of the Kozlov gardener. In the end, the Soviet state took over the nursery and appointed Michurin as the head, creating extremely favorable conditions for his work. Michurin received funds, scientific equipment, and the necessary personnel.

In 1928, on the basis of the nursery, a selection and genetic station for fruit and berry crops named after I.V. Michurin was created.

In 1931, a production training and experimental plant was organized there, which included: a state farm-garden on an area of ​​over 3,500 hectares, the Central Research Institute of Northern Fruit Growing and a new higher educational institution- Institute of selection of fruit and berry crops. The task of all these institutions was to develop Michurin's teachings, to introduce his experience into practice, to create new varieties of fruit and berry plants, to develop issues related to the agricultural technology of horticulture, scientific training specialists, management of numerous zonal stations and strong points.

All his life Michurin was associated with many gardeners, scientists and collective farmers. He conducted extensive correspondence, appeared in the press, and provided consultations. Never leaving his hometown, he kind of traveled all over The Soviet Union, yes, in fact, all over the world, receiving seeds and seedlings from Canada, Japan, Central Asia, Crimea, France, England, from the northern tundra, from Manchuria and Japan.

“I have survived three tsars and for the seventeenth year have been working under the conditions of a socialist system,” Michurin wrote in 1934. - I have passed from one world to another, which is diametrically opposite to the previous one. An abyss separates these two worlds.

This can be seen from the following.

During all my many years of work to improve fruit plants under tsarism, I did not use any salary for my labors, let alone any subsidies or benefits from the tsarist treasury. I conducted the business as best I could, using my own funds, earned by personal labor; He constantly struggled with want and endured all kinds of hardships in silence and never asked for benefits from the treasury.

Several times, on the advice of prominent figures in horticulture, I sent my reports to the Department of Agriculture, in which I tried to clarify the importance and necessity of improving and replenishing our assortments of fruit plants, but nothing came of these reports.

I greeted the October Revolution for granted, historically necessary in its justice and inevitability, and immediately turned to all honest agricultural specialists with an appeal to go over to the side Soviet power and unconditionally follow the path of the working class and its party. And to those who argued "that it is better to use the old than to strive for the unknown new," I then replied: "You cannot cling to a part when the whole irresistibly strives forward." And already in 1918 I went to serve in the People's Commissariat of Agriculture as its representative, and in 1919 my nursery was declared state property with my full sincere consent. "

Michurin considered the main scientific and practical task of his business to be the replenishment of the assortment of fruit and berry plants in central Russia and the advancement of the growing border of southern crops to the north. When developing new varieties, he gave great importance selection of producers and never forgot to point out that the breeder is required to comprehensively study the properties and qualities of each variety or species of plants selected for the role of producer. He emphasized that even the age of parent plants of the same variety or species significantly affects the quality of hybrid offspring: for example, older trees more fully transmit hereditary traits than young ones. "When selecting combinations of pairs of plants for crossing," wrote Michurin, "the role of the mother should be assigned to individuals with comparatively better qualities, since the mother plant always more fully transmits its hereditary characteristics to the hybrid."

Michurin considered hybridization as a means for obtaining new form combining the characteristics and properties of the parental pair, and at the same time as a means of loosening the fixed heredity of the plant Michurin has repeatedly pointed out that the breeder's work does not end with the production of hybrid seeds, but, on the contrary, is just beginning. Conditions external environment, he believed, are the main factor determining the hereditary qualities of the resulting plant.

Michurin was attentive to the work of biologists.

It is not his fault that the so-called Michurin doctrine became the banner of that group of scientists who considered themselves the only right-wing - real materialists, real Marxists. However, he himself wrote: “Science and, in particular, its specific area - natural science - is inextricably linked with philosophy, but since a human worldview is manifested in philosophy, therefore, it is one of the instruments of the class struggle. Partisanship and philosophy are the main guiding points. The structure of things determines the structure of ideas. "

In 1932, the city of Kozlov was renamed Michurinsk in honor of the great Russian gardener. Michurin himself was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

“... My health is still in a tolerable condition,” he wrote to his student PN Yakovlev. - If from time to time attacks of various senile ailments are aggravated, then this is an inevitable phenomenon at my 77 years. The trouble is that I am sitting in one place. No exercise. The People's Commissariat of Agriculture suddenly had a fantasy to assign me a salary of 1,000 rubles. a month, which I did not want at all and, of course, immediately protested with a request to cancel such a resolution or, in extreme cases, at least reduce it to 500 rubles, but received a refusal, motivated by the fact that the government could not pay me less than 1000 rubles ... in view of the need to improve my financial situation ”.

Rejecting the well-known thesis that you cannot imagine better than nature, Michurin bred more than three hundred new varieties of fruit and berry plants. The very names of the varieties he bred sound like music. Apples - "pepin saffron", "bellefleur-kitaika", "champaren-kitaika", "slavianka", "antonovka six hundred grams", pears - "winter bere", "beauty of the north", plums - "reklode of thorns", "reklod collective farm "," Rennlode reform ", grapes -" northern white "," Russian concord ", mountain ash -" dessert ", raspberries" texas "and many, many others.

In 1934, summing up his work, Michurin wrote:

“... They call me a spontaneous dialectician, empiricist, deductist.

Without going into reasoning whether these epithets are right or wrong, I consider it my duty to say that I began my work in 1875, back in the days of the remnants of serfdom, at the dawn of Russian capitalism, when there was not only such a science as genetics (she and now it is only being formed), which should be organically connected with selection, when there was no scientific fruit growing at all (the department of fruit growing was established for the first time in 1915), when all Russian science was clothed in the Alexander uniform. In short, I had no precedent for the scientific formulation of the breeding of new varieties of fruit and berry plants. I didn't even have any serious experience of others before me. I saw only one thing - the poverty of Central Russian fruit growing in general, which is extraordinary for other countries and for our south, and the poverty of the range in particular.

I watched with sadness the poverty of our fruit growing, with all the exceptional importance of this branch of agriculture, and then I came to the conclusion that the gardening of central and especially northern Russia has remained in place since time immemorial, not moving a step forward, using only what accidentally fell under hand, despite the fact that many centuries have passed, and Western European countries and America have gone far ahead in this area along the path of progressing their crops and raising their yields.

"What do we have in the gardens of the vast area of ​​central Russia?" - I said then. Everywhere and everywhere, some traditional antonovka, anise, boletus, terentyevka and similar archaeological antiquities appear, - these are in apple trees, and in pears, cherries and plums, and even less, some favorite seedless plants, thinnets of summer ripening, cherries of Vladimir, semi-cultivated varieties of prunes, wild thorn. Only occasionally, here and there, in an insignificant amount in the gardens, were several varieties of Reneta of foreign origin interspersed. The organism of these varieties has long become outdated, has become frail and sickly, and has lost its resistance, being easily exposed to various diseases and suffering from pests for a long time.

The sad picture of the former Russian gardening aroused in me an acutely painful desire to remake all this, to influence the nature of plants in a different way, and this desire resulted in my special, now well-known principle: “We cannot wait for favors from nature; it is our task to take them from her. " But having no precedents in the field of scientific formulation of the case at an early stage of my work, I was forced to act intuitively, and a little later - to turn to the deductive method. I set myself two daring tasks: to replenish the assortment of fruit and berry plants of the middle zone with outstanding varieties in terms of yield and quality, and to move the border of growing southern crops far to the north. "

In 1935 Michurin was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and in 1935 - a full member of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences named after V.I. V.I. Lenin. Sometimes he was compared with the famous American fruit grower Luther Burbank, but Michurin did not like and did not accept this comparison, although he respected Burbank's work. Even in old age, Michurin responded to all measures related to the development of technically necessary crops in the country - tau-sagyz, cotton, ether plants, cork and tung trees. Even Michurin grew tobacco for himself, and filled cigarettes at his leisure. He constantly met with various delegations, gave advice and consultations. At the same time, I tried to speak with each person in the most ordinary language, not hampered by special terminology. It is written in his diary: “... In all conversations with excursionists, and in all descriptive articles, you should, if possible, avoid the use of various difficult to understand scientific terms, most of which are used by various authors for the sole purpose of showing their scholarship, but in fact it always comes out that such persons least of all have real knowledge. "

At the request of his compatriots, he was buried in the central square of Michurinsk, former Kozlov, - the city in which his whole life passed.