Znamensky Street

One of the main streets of the mountainous part of Tobolsk is named after the artist Mikhail Stepanovich Znamensky.

Znamensky was born in 1833 in Kurgan. The first who noticed that the boy draws well were the Decembrists. They were able to organize his training with the Tobolsk artist Kozlov. Then Mikhail Znamensky studied at the Main St. Petersburg Theological Seminary, at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. He returned to Tobolsk and became an art teacher here.

Mikhail Stepanovich Znamensky was a very enthusiastic person. He traveled, studied archaeology, and wrote historical essays.

In the second half of the XIX century, Znamensky’s talent as a cartoonist developed. Governor V.A. Lysogorsky got more than others. In one of the cartoons «On Guard of the province and the Chancellery», he depicted him with the invariable attributes of a bureaucrat — an inkwell and a pen. The manager of the Tobolsk State Chamber pulls a thread from a spinning wheel into his pocket. To the left of him, the head of merchant Andrian Syromyatnikov (Tobolsk «wine king») sticks out of a wine barrel. Behind him, Bishop Efrem of Tobolsk with a decanter of vodka. All the artist’s caricatures were in a similar vein.
Mikhail Stepanovich Znamensky stood at the origins of the Tobolsk bone-cutting industry. The traditions of bone carving were brought to Tobolsk at the beginning of the XVIII century by captured Swedes who made bone boxes and snuffboxes from them. After the Swedes returned to their homeland, the bone-cutting industry died out and its revival occurred at the end of the XIX century.

The two-storey wooden building near the intersection of Znamensky and Radishchev streets was built in 1965. It housed the women’s dormitory of the Tobolsk Pedagogical College. On the ground floor there was a kitchen, shower rooms and a commandant’s room, on the second floor there were girls' rooms. Strict discipline reigned in the dormitory, there was perfect order on the floors and in the rooms.

On November 6, 1916, the Teachers' Institute was opened in Tobolsk. The first director of the Institute was G.Y. Malyarevsky.

In 1918, 18 teachers worked at the Institute, among them the famous artist P.P. Chukomin, biologist V.M. Novitsky.

In 1919, the Tobolsk Teachers' Institute made its first and last pre-Soviet graduation and was evacuated to Tomsk. It was revived only in 1939.

On September 1, 1954, the Tobolsk Teachers' Institute was transformed into a pedagogical one. On the basis of the Institute in 1962, the «Observation Station of artificial Earth satellites» was opened under the guidance of Associate Professor E.P. Razbitnaya. In 1969, the Tobolsk Pedagogical Institute was named after D.I. Mendeleev.

In the 1980s, a new building of the Institute was erected on Znamensky Street.
The historical and pedagogical school of Professor Yuri Panteleimonovich Pribilsky, Doctor of Historical Sciences, gained fame and recognition in the region the development and implementation of a technological approach in the methodology of teaching mathematics became the work of Professor Olga Borisovna Episheva; the school of Nadezhda Nikolaevna Surtayeva was also famous. With her participation, the laboratory «Pedagogical Innovation» was opened at the Tobolsk University.

On September 9, 2009, the Tobolsk Pedagogical Institute was transformed into the D.I. Mendeleev Tobolsk Socio-Pedagogical Academy with 14 faculties, 39 departments, a postgraduate school and a joint council for the defense of doctoral dissertations in philological sciences. The total number of students was more than 6 thousand people.

In 2014, the Academy was transformed into the D.I. Mendeleev Pedagogical Institute (branch) of Tyumen State University.

At the origins of the bone-cutting industry were captured Swedes, who at the beginning of the XVIII century carved out of bone boxes and snuffboxes. After the Swedes returned home, the bone-cutting industry faded for many years, and its revival occurred only in the second half of the XIX century, when such enthusiasts as the artist M.S. Znamensky appeared.

In 1872, Tobolsk surveyor Ivan Oveshkov opened a bone-cutting workshop in the city. At the end of the century, several workshops appeared. In 1893, the "Exemplary Siberian Workshop" was organized by Yu.I. Melgunova. There were periods of prolonged stagnation in the bone-cutting industry, they fell during the difficult period of the World War. It was only in 1929 that a bone-cutting workshop was organized, thanks to the carvers Denisov and Peskov, which in 1932 grew into the artel "Koopexport". This year was considered the year of the formation of the bone-cutting factory.

The plot basis of the works of the Tobolsk bone cutters is northern folklore, in view of a purely applied nature: cigarette cases, paper knives, bookmarks for books. Masters of the highest class are called: G.G. Krivoshein, G.A. Khazov, V.P. Obryadova, M.V. Timergazeeva. From the first years of the organization, the factory participates in all major exhibitions of republican and All-Union significance. The works of Tobolsk bone cutters have been shown at international exhibitions (Paris 1937, New York 1939, Brussels 1958, Osaka 1970, USA 1974).

They won honorable fame and recognition. The Brussels exhibition is especially memorable -a diploma and a gold medal. Today, the factory is developing in three main directions: the production of consumer goods, the creation of works of an exhibition nature and the production of souvenirs.