Khludov

a family of Moscow merchants who owned large cotton-milling enterprises.

Ivan Ivanovich Khludov (died 1835), a former peasant, was the family’s founder. Early in the 19th century Khludov and his family were engaged in the cottage production of sashes and belts. In the 1820’s Khludov became a member of the Moscow merchant class (kuptsy).

Gerasim Ivanovich Khludov (died June 7 [19], 1885, in Moscow) and Aleksei Ivanovich Khludov (born 1818; died Aug. 23 [Sept. 4], 1882, in Moscow) were the sons of I. I. Khludov. In 1845 they opened one of Russia’s first steam-powered cotton mills and founded the firm known as Sons of Ivan Khludov in the city of Egor’evsk (now in Moscow Oblast). In 1874 the firm was transformed into the Shareholding Society, with a capital of 3 million rubles; the only shareholders were the Khludovs and their relatives. From 1872 to 1977 the Khludovs built another large factory in the village of lartsevo (now a city in Smolensk Oblast).

Aleksei Khludov was also a collector of Old Russian, Greek, and South Slavic manuscripts. At the time of his death, his collection consisted of 430 manuscripts and 624 old printed books, including manuscript copies of the Stoglav, works and translations by Maksim Grek, works by supporters of the Schism, and a ninth-century Greek psaltery embellished with miniatures (all now in the State Historical Museum in Moscow).

Ivan Alekseevich Khludov (born 1839 in Moscow; died July 1868 in Samarkand) was the son of A. I. Khludov. An enterprising entrepreneur, he visited Great Britain and the USA (1858–60) to study the cotton market. He also developed a Middle Asian market for the Russian textile industry.

Strikes at the Khludovs’ factories in lartsevo (1880) and Egor’evsk (1839) are known in the history of the Russian labor movement as the Khludov strikes.