The Krasnii Proletarii Workshop originated under the ownership of Ivan Kushnerev, a Russian entrepreneur who founded the Kushnerev & Company Printing Shop in 1869 in Moscow. When Kushnerev died in 1896, his printing operation was one of the largest in Imperial Russia. In 1919, the printer was nationalized by the Soviets and consigned to the Printing Section of the Moscow Economic Council (MSNKh). Around 1920, it was placed under the Poligrafkiniga (Book and Magazine Printing) Trust and was given ...

Gosizdat was established in Moscow in May 1919 via the merger of the publishing departments of VTsIK (All-Russian Central Executive Committee), the Moscow Soviet, the Petrograd (St. Petersburg) Soviet, the People's Commissariat of the RSFSR, and others. Gosizdat was the first large-scale, state-controlled publisher formed with the purpose of joining the nation's printing and publishing entities under a single institution. While it existed somewhat independent of the government, by 1930 Gosizdat served as the base for the ...