The monogram stamp displayed in the exhibition used to belong to Ilya Ulyanov, the director of public schools in the Simbirsk Governorate, and Vladimir Lenin’s father. It is one of the few of his personal belongings that have been preserved to this day. The stamp is on display on the desk in Ulyanov’s office.

Museum experts suggest that this stamp could have been made in the Urals, as this region was the center of the stone-carving trade in the 19th century. The stamps were often made of rock crystal or smoky quartz, sometimes of jasper, rhodonite, amethyst, carnelian, and agate. Depending on the buyer’s wish, the stone pieces were carved with the initials or the coat of arms. The cost of one letter on the stamp reached one ruble. At the end of the 19th century, this amount of money could buy a pood (Russian measure of weight = 16.38 kg) of wheat flour.

The documents of the Lenin Memorial fund contain information on the place and time of use of this monogram stamp: Simbirsk, the 1870s — the 1880s. It was probably the time when Ulyanov Sr. purchased it.

Ilya Ulyanov was a statesman, a teacher, full State Counsellor. He graduated from the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Kazan University, received a degree in Mathematics. After his studies, he got a job as a teacher of Mathematics at the Penza Institute of the Nobility, where he was also in charge of the weather station.

In 1869, he was appointed the Inspector of public schools of the Simbirsk Governorate, and then in 1874, and became the director. His duties included supervising county schools, parochial schools, city and district schools, as well as supervising the inspectors. Ulyanov had to work a lot with papers. He marked books, sealed letters, and authenticated documents with this monogram stamp.

Ilya Ulyanov used the stamp for many years. The Simbirsk schools were his life’s work, and even on the day of his death, he was working on annual reports.