The beginning of printing in Russia

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, at the behest of Tsar Ivan IV, established the first Russian printing press in the Kremlin.

By that time in Western Europe, book printing was already quite commonplace: after Johann Gutenberg invented in the middle of the 15th century how not to rewrite books manually, and to print them on special machines, printing houses appeared in many large European cities. Publishing for Europeans became vital: social and economic development, coupled with scientific and technological progress, would simply be impossible without meeting the storage and transmission needs.

Printing in Russia had several other prerequisites. Here, prints were necessary, first of all, in order to strengthen ideologically the increasingly powerful authority of the autocrat and the Orthodox Church. It was the mass creation of books of a religious orientation that, according to Ivan the Terrible, should not only unify all church books, getting rid of the heretical currents that appeared, but also create the necessary ideological basis for positioning Russia as a great power.

The beginning of printing in Russia raises a number of questions. First, the chronicles talk about Ivan Fedorov and the first printing house is very unclear and vague. Moreover, in the letters of Ivan Grozny himself, such people as Marousha Nefediev and Vasiuk Nikiforov are mentioned in connection with the beginning of industrial production of books, of which there is no other information. The basic data directly about Ivan Fedorov and Petr Mstislavets are contained in works already XVII century.

Secondly, if book printing in Russia is usually associated with the publication of the book "Apostle" in Moscow in 1564, at the beginning of the XIX century books appeared in the field of view of historians, which, as further examination showed, were published in Moscow earlier than this date. Scientists have so far identified seven such books: three Four-Gospels, two Psalms and two triads of Lenten.

Thirdly, much says that before the Fedorov in Moscow and a number of other cities, Russian masters, primarily from monasteries, who made attempts to create print shops to print religious books there. At the same time, the circulation of the publications 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 assignment, which Ivan the Terrible together with Metropolitan Makarii gave Ivan Fedorov. To fulfill this assignment, the latter began April 19, 1563, and only after almost a year, on March 1, 1564, he was issued the first "Apostle". The quality of this book largely surpassed the foreign counterparts, but the circulation was extremely limited. A year later, Fedorov and Mstislavets published a "Chapel" in Moscow, after which they were forced to leave for Rzeczpospolita, where they created a new printing house and produced the first printed "ABC".

After I. Fedorov left Moscow, his case in the Russian capital was continued by Nikifor Tarasyev and Andronicus, who released the Psalter in 1568. Despite the soon-to-come fire, which completely destroyed the Printing House, the process of industrial manufacturing of books could not be stopped. Russia confidently moved along the path of the Enlightenment.

The beginning of printing in Russia, despite all the discussions and discrepancies available today, has become an important milestone in the history of our country. The creation in Moscow of a printing house for the industrial production of books stressed the great interest of the society in literate people and created the prerequisites for the further development of the country.