In 1928, Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin and his family moved from the mansion to apartment No. 274 on Tverskaya Street, 38. Sytin brought with him everything that he valued the most. A special place in the living room was given to the portraits of his parents. Ivan Sytin’s mother Olga Alexandrovna is depicted in the portrait without a hat, in a brown dress with a lace collar.

Olga Alexandrovna Sytina came from a peasant family in the village of Gnezdnikovo, Soligalichsky Uyezd, Kostroma Governorate. She married the parish clerk Dmitry Gerasimovich Sytin. They had four children: Ivan, the eldest, sisters Serafima and Alexandra, and the youngest Sergey. In addition to studying at the parish school, Ivan was obliged to help his mother with chores and in the garden. In the summer, along with other children, he foraged for mushrooms and berries, and fished with a seine made from a bag.

Ivan grew up a very smart and hardworking boy with an excellent memory and a habitual liking for frugality. These makings of a future entrepreneur manifested themselves from an early age and developed stronger and stronger every year. His family was not rich; hence, in such conditions, the eldest son was expected to start his career early and provide financial assistance to his parents.

Ivan Sytin began working at the age of 12. Together with his uncle Vasily, he went to a fair in Nizhny Novgorod, where he worked for a furrier, peddling his goods. At the age of 15, he went to Moscow on the recommendation of the merchant Sharapov, who owned fur boutiques and bookstores. There were no vacancies in the boutiques, so Ivan Sytin was assigned to work at a bookstore. Later, fulfilling his mother’s request, he also found a job for his younger brother Sergey at one of Sharapov’s establishment.

When only every tenth resident of Russia was literate, Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin’s mother could read and write. Seven letters of Olga Alexandrovna, written to her eldest son in different years, have been preserved in the museum’s funds. Owing to them, researchers managed to establish many details of the Sytin family life. It can be assumed that Olga Alexandrovna herself was from the Uspenskaya Sloboda (settlement), which was located in the Galich Uyezd on the trade route from Galich to Kineshma and consisted of 27 households with 90 male and 114 female residents. There was also an “Orthodox monastery with two churches”. Ivan Sytin’s mother died after 1882 and was buried next to her husband in the town cemetery of Galich (Kostroma Oblast).