The Novosiltsev Coal Joint-Stock Company was established on the initiative of the hereditary nobleman Alexander Yuryevich Novosiltsev and the Poltava first-guild merchant Iosif Moiseyevich Brusilovsky. The company’s activities were connected with the extraction and sale of coal and other minerals at A.Yu. Novosiltsev’s deposit, covering 1,715 desyatinas, near the village of Mikhailovka in Slavyanoserbsk Uyezd of Yekaterinoslav Governorate.
The company began operations in November 1913 on the basis of a charter approved on April 12, 1913. The company’s authorized capital amounted to 4 million rubles and was divided into 40,000 shares. The par value of each share was 100 rubles. The office and governing bodies of the Novosiltsev Coal Company operated in St. Petersburg, occupying their own premises at 3 Yekaterininskaya Street throughout 1913–1916, and from 1916 they were located at 5 Fontanka River Embankment.
N.F. von Ditmar became a shareholder of the Novosiltsev Coal Joint-Stock Company in 1913 by purchasing a total of 295 shares. After joining the circle of co-owners of the company’s capital, Nikolai Fedorovich obtained the right to participate in general meetings of shareholders and the opportunity to elect and be elected to the management board.
At the general meeting of shareholders on November 19, 1913, N.F. von Ditmar, together with L.I. Ignatiev, A.A. Naranovich, A.Yu. Novosiltsev, and M.I. Ladyzhensky, was elected to the Board of Directors. By the unanimous decision of the directorate, Nikolai Fedorovich took the position of Chairman of the Management Board. The election of N.F. von Ditmar to the company’s top executive post was associated not so much with the number of shares he held as with his personal authority and, most importantly, his service in the Main Mining Administration. As Professor V.V. Krutikov noted in his monograph, “senior positions in joint-stock companies were readily given to persons in government service, taking into account, above all, their extensive business connections.”
Thanks to the support of N.F. von Ditmar, considerable attention was paid to labor issues at the mines. In particular, under his direct supervision, construction began on a workers’ colony at the company’s mine in Slavyanoserbsk Uyezd of Yekaterinoslav Governorate. To create proper living conditions for 800 workers, it was planned to build 25 wooden eight-apartment houses, a grocery store, a bakery, a hospital, a barrack for infectious patients, a stable, etc. After N.F. von Ditmar’s extended four-year tenure (1913–1917) as head of the management board of the Novosiltsev Coal Company, from February 1917 his name disappears from the company’s official documentation.
After the February Revolution of 1917, N.F. von Ditmar was a member of the Provisional Council of the Russian Republic (the Pre-Parliament) representing the Council of Congresses of Mining Industrialists of Southern Russia. After October 1917, he participated in the anti-Bolshevik movement. In 1918, under Hetman P.P. Skoropadsky, he headed the organization of major industrialists “Protofis.” He was one of the delegates to the Iasi Conference (November 16–20, 1918). In 1919, he headed the Committee of the Donbas Big Bourgeoisie in Rostov-on-Don to support the army of General A.I. Denikin. On July 5, 1919, he died of typhus.
On June 28, 1918, the Company’s property was declared the property of the RSFSR on the basis of the Council of People’s Commissars decree “On the nationalization of the largest enterprises…”.