The beginning of printing in Russia, the date of which has recently become the subject of numerous discussions, is usually associated with the names of Ivan Fedorov and Peter Mstislavets, who, by order of Tsar Ivan IV, established the first Russian printing house in the Kremlin.
By this time, printing in Western Europe had become quite commonplace: after Johannes Gutenberg invented in the middle of the 15th century how to not manually rewrite books, but to print them on special machines, printing houses appeared in many large European cities. Printing for Europeans has become vital: social and economic development, coupled with scientific and technological progress, would simply be impossible without meeting the needs for storing and transmitting information.
Typography in Russia had several other prerequisites. Here, print publications were necessary, first of all, in order to ideologically strengthen the ever-growing power of the autocrat and the Orthodox Church. It was the mass creation of books of a religious orientation that, in the opinion of Ivan the Terrible, should not only unify all church books, ridding himself of heretical currents along the way, but also create the necessary ideological basis for positioning Russia as a great power.
The beginning of typography in Russia raises a number of questions. Firstly, the annals speak of Ivan Fedorov and the first printing house very vaguely and vaguely. Moreover, in the letters of Ivan the Terrible himself, such people as Marusha Nefedyev and Vasyuk Nikiforov, about whom there is no information anywhere else, are mentioned in connection with the beginning of the industrial production of books. Basic data directly on Ivan Fedorov and Peter Mstislavets are contained in the works of the XVII century.
Secondly, if typography in Russia is usually associated with the publication of the book “The Apostle” in Moscow in 1564, then at the beginning of the 19th century, historians came to the attention of books that, as further examination showed, were printed in Moscow earlier than this date. Scientists have so far identified seven such books: three Four Gospels, two Psalms and two trio of Lenten.
Thirdly, there is much to say that even before I. Fedorov in Moscow and a number of other cities, Russian masters, primarily from monasteries who made attempts to create printing houses to print religious books there. At the same time, the circulation of the editions published in them was quite large, although the quality of the work left much to be desired.
According to official history, the beginning of printing in Russia is associated with a special commission that Ivan the Terrible, together with Metropolitan Makarii, gave to Ivan Fedorov. The latter began to carry out this assignment on April 19, 1563, and only after almost a year, March 1, 1564, did he publish the first Apostle. The quality of this book was in many ways superior to its foreign counterparts, but the circulation was extremely limited. A year later, Fedorov and Mstislavets published the Chapel in Moscow, after which they were forced to leave for the Commonwealth, where they created a new printing house and released the first printed ABC.
After I. Fedorov left Moscow, his work in the Russian capital was continued by Nikifor Tarasiev and Andronik, who released the Psalter in 1568. Despite the fire that soon broke out, which completely destroyed the Printing House, the process of industrial production of books could no longer be stopped. Russia confidently moved along the path of Enlightenment.
The beginning of book printing in Russia, despite all the discussions and discrepancies available today, has become an important milestone in the history of our country. The creation of a printing house in Moscow for the industrial production of books underlined the great interest of society in literate people and created the prerequisites for the further development of the country.