Basnin, Vasily Nikolaevich

Representative of the Basnins merchant family. The ancestors were peasants - immigrants from Kholmogor. They lived in the upper Lena in the village of Orlenga. Vasily Nikolayevich’s grandfather traded flour in Lena and in Yakutsk. On Lena, one of the rocks was called Basninskaya heifer. His father, Nikolai Timofeevich Basnin took a drink in Irkutsk. Later he traded furs in Kyakhta , was engaged in the trade of tea and other goods at the Makaryevskaya Fair ; in 1812, together with his brothers, he founded the Basnins Trading House.

Vasily Basnin was born on December 16, 1799 in Irkutsk. He worked in the family business in Kyakhta from the age of 12. Among the Chinese merchants was known by the name of Wah-Sin-Ko. It was recorded in the Kyakhta merchants. I went on business of a trading house to Moscow and to the Makaryevskaya fair. In the early 1820s he married the daughter of the merchant Portnov.

Engaged in self-education. He studied history and natural sciences, especially botany. In Irkutsk, met with the botanist N. S. Turchaninov . He discovered a new type of water lily, which he gave the name Nymphaea basniniana . In 1831-1850 he headed the Basnins Trading House. Until 1840, he lived most of the time at work in Kyakhta , in the summer he worked at the Makaryevsky Fair, spent the autumn and part of the winter in Irkutsk. Then he settled in Irkutsk.

In 1834, he broke the “ Basninsky Garden ” in Irkutsk (not preserved). Fable donated money to raise orphans. In 1841-1844 he was a senior trustee, and then director of the Orphanage House E. Medvednikova. In 1851 he became a member of the Russian Geographical Society . In 1850-1853 he served as the mayor in Irkutsk ^[1] . I spent about 70 thousand rubles to search and mine gold , but I did not find gold.

Basnin helped a lot with exiled Decembrists. A. N. Muravyov wrote about it this way: “Can I not love, disrespect, and not honor everything that bears the name of Basnin! You have accepted us as friends in the former cold for us, and for you warm Siberia; Fables also related us to Siberia and warmed Siberia for us ” ^[2] .

He inherited from parents and uncles about 300 thousand rubles. He closed trade in Kyakhta and Nizhny Novgorod. I left Irkutsk. He presented his library to the Irkutsk Seminary. For a short time, the Basnins family lived in St. Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa and Kharkov. In 1858, settled in Moscow. He died on January 29, 1876, was buried in the cemetery of the Alekseevsky convent.

Basnin has collected a large collection of engravings by Western European and Russian artists, as well as materials on the history of Siberia.

In the “Readings of the Moscow Society of History and Antiquities of Russia” for 1875, the following reports by V. N. Basnin were printed:

1. “Copies of papers about Hieromonk Arseny, the former Metropolitan of Rostov, who was imprisoned in the Nerchinsky Assumption Monastery” (Prince I, pp. 131-143);
2. “A historical note on the Chinese border, compiled by the adviser to the Troitsko-Sava border government Sychevsky in 1846” (book 2, p. 1–292);
3. "Eastern Siberia, a note on a business trip to Sakhalin Island by Captain Lieutenant Podushkin" (ib., Pp. 103-138);
4. "On the embassy in China c. Golovkina ”(Prince 4, p. 1-103).

• Basnin, Ivan Vasilievich (1835-1898) - mining engineer.
• Basnin, Nikolai Vasilievich (1843-1918) - lawyer, collector.

In honor of Vasily Basnin, it was called Basninskaya Street in Irkutsk (in Soviet times it was renamed Sverdlova Street ).

• Basnin, Vasily Nikolaevich // Russian Biographical Dictionary : in 25 volumes. - SPb. , 1900. - T. 2: Aleksinsky - Bestuzhev-Ryumin. - S. 561.
• Basnin, Vasily Nikolaevich // Encyclopedia "Moscow" / Ed. S.O. Schmidt . - M .: Big Russian Encyclopedia , 1997 .-- 976 p.
• N. S. Schukin Vasily Nikolaevich Basnin // Additions to the Irkutsk Diocesan Vedomosti, No. 27, July 3, 1876, pp. 373-382

• Basnin, Vasily Nikolaevich (neopr.) . irkipedia.ru. Date of treatment April 10, 2014.
• Lyudmila Lvovna Boychuk. “And he draws to Irkutsk, but holds Moscow ...” (unopened) . Moscow magazine. Date of treatment April 10, 2014.
• Basnin Vasily Nikolaevich (neopr.) . babr.ru. Date of treatment April 11, 2014.