The 24th Lithography Workshop was located at Kronverkskaia and Mir Streets in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). Historically, the workshop had its roots in Imperial Russia and it was a large printing operation founded in 1881 by Theodore Kibbel (a.k.a. Fedor Fyodorovich Kibbel). Shortly after the printer was nationalized by the Soviets, it became the 1st State Lithography Workshop. In 1924, the workshop was named in honor of Mikhail Pavlovich Tomskii (1880-1936), head of the Soviet trade union and the head of the State Publishing House. During the early 1930s, the printer was reorganized as the 24th Lithography Workshop of Ogiz (Association of State Book and Magazine Publishers) and was placed under the management of the Poligrafkniga (Book and Magazine Printing) state printing trust.