The 1st Exemplary Gosizdat Typolithography Workshop was located in Moscow at 28 Valovaia Street. Historically, the workshop began as the Sharapov-Sytin Partnerhip in the era prior to the Russian Revolution. Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin (1851-1934) was the son of a peasant. He opened a small print shop in Moscow using a single press and by the start of the 20th century his printing business (at Valovaia and Piatnitskaia streets) was the largest private printing company in tsarist Russia.

In late 1918, the Bolsheviks commandeered the Royal Print Yard and around May 1919, they nationalized Sytin's printing business. The Yard was transformed into Gosizdat (State Publishing House) while Sytin's operations became the 1st State Typo-lithography. By 1921, the lithography was named the 1st Exemplary Printing Workshop of Gosizdat (State Publishing House) owing to the fact that it was a contract printer for Gosizdat. In 1930, the 1st Exemplary Printing Workshop of Gosizdat was placed under Ogiz, the state publishing monopoly.

After World War II, the 1st Exemplary was named in honor of Andrei Alexandrovich Zhdanov (1896-1948), a deceased Soviet political leader and it was placed in the Glavpoligrafizdat Trust (Main Administration for Matters of Polygraphic Industry Publishing and Book Selling). The trust was formed in 1949 to oversee printing, publishing and the retail book trade in the USSR.