The photo shows the eldest daughter of Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin, Maria, and her husband Fyodor Blagov.

Maria was born in 1877. Her godfather was Mikhail Dmitrievich Naumov, a bookseller who met Sytin at the Nikolsky market. It is not known exactly when Maria Ivanovna married Fyodor Blagov, but it can be assumed that it happened in 1895–1896, as at that time Fyodor Blagov became a shareholder and a member of the board of Sytin and Co. From 1897, he helped edit a number of Sytin’s publications. The young people lived not far from Ivan Sytin himself — in their own house on Yermolaevsky Lane (near the Patriarch’s Ponds). Maria died in 1906 at the age of 29. She had four children: Lydia, Vladimir, Nikolay and Ivan. Later, Ivan Sytin took care of them.

Fyodor Ivanovich Blagov (1866–1934) came from a merchant family from the Romanovo-Borisoglebsky Uyezd, Yaroslavl Governorate. He graduated from the Moscow Gymnasium and the Medical Faculty of Moscow University, worked for some time as a resident doctor in the Mariinsky Hospital, in the Artisans’ Almshouse and in the Alexander College. After marrying Maria Sytina, he retired from medical practice and became a board member of Sytin & Co. A man formally far from the literary scene, in 1901 Fyodor Blagov became the official editor of the newspaper “The Russian Word”.

According to his contemporaries, “he was a hard worker who immersed himself into work and almost gave up his personal life for the sake of the newspaper. He had grown together with ‘The Russian Word’, became so close to its employees that he saw the newspaper as a big family, his family. F.I. spent thousands of sleepless nights at his desk, and here, at this table, was his life, his joy, his pride, his happiness. ‘Everything for the newspaper and nothing for myself’ — this was his main motto, and he carried this banner to the end.”

After the revolution of 1917, Fyodor Blagov collaborated with periodicals published in the territories controlled by the Government of South Russia. In 1919, he emigrated to Romania, in 1922 he moved to Czechoslovakia, and then to France. Fyodor Blagov participated in the work of the Moscow Community of Emigres and was elected a comrade (that is, deputy) chairman of the board. Blagov died in 1934 in Paris, and was buried at the cemetery in Vanvey.