Ivan Rodionovich Batashov (1732 — 1821) — founder of the Vyksa ironworks and the city of Town of Vyksa.
"The Vladimir Monomakh" — that was the name by which one of the founders of the Vyksa ironworks and the city of Vyksa, Ivan Batashov, was known in former times. Together with his elder brother Andrey, he built the industry of an entire region and entered the history of Russian entrepreneurship as an example of an outstanding organizer of production and a philanthropist. The younger of the two entrepreneur brothers was born in Tula and was named after his famous grandfather Ivan Timofeyevich, the first of the Batashov family to be transferred from the "Tula state smiths" into the ranks of ironmasters.
The ironworking enterprise founded in the Petrine era by Ivan Timofeyevich under the patronage of the renowned Demidov was continued and expanded by his son Rodion, yet its principal development came only years later, owing to the uniquely intensive activity of his grandsons — Ivan and Andrey. With the example of the Demidovs before them and drawing on the experience accumulated by their father and grandfather, the ironmaster brothers did not merely overcome the difficulties that arose after the closure of their father's five plants — they shifted their sphere of activity to what was then the new Prioksky region and performed an economic miracle, transforming this forested backwater into a "new Urals." In the space of two decades, without the support of influential patrons or state subsidies — acting, as people said at the time, "by their own strong hand" — the Batashov brothers erected a complex of 14 ironworks in the depths of the Murom forests. The center of this metallurgical empire became the ironworking selo (a larger village) of Town of Vyksa. Popular tradition holds that under Ivan Rodionovich the manor house was not closed even to ordinary craftsmen. Anyone who came to the master "in search of justice" was heard out, and his case was resolved "without regard to persons." No one left without help and support from the all-powerful yet merciful and fair "Monomakh." Batashov lived in this house for nearly 40 years of his long life. It held moments of triumph and terrible blows of fate alike — the loss of his wife and children, and later of his granddaughter Darya, who had married hussar Lieutenant General Dmitry Dmitriyevich Shepelev. All of this Ivan Rodionovich endured without complaint, with Christian humility.
He loved all things Russian, and for that reason encouraged natural talents and inventors at his ironworks.