Nina Printing House

House-museum of underground printing-office Nina where newspaper Iskra (Spark) was published in 1901-1905.

Nina was a secret underground printing house in Baku, Russian Empire, established in July 1901 by the Baku Iskraist group, consisting of Lado Ketskhoveli, Leonid Krasin, "Nina" P. Kozerenko, Avel Enukidze and Lev Halperin (Лев Ефимович Гальперин). Nina received direct assistance from Lenin and had contacts with the Tbilisi committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.^[1]

At Nina the illegal Georgian language newspaper Brdzola was printed, as well as an array of leaflets and pamphlets in Russian, Armenian and Georgian languages. Nina was temporarily shut down from April 1902 to December 1902. In 1903 it was occupied with printing the conference documents of the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, documents of the Caucasian League of RSDLP as well as works by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Lenin.

After the 1903 congress it came to function as the printing house of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. In total around 1.5 million copies of different publications were brought out by Nina. At the 3rd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, the legacy of Nina was praised. In January 1906 the central committee of the party decided to shut Nina down.^[2]

References

1. Lenin: Report of the Iskra Editorial Board to the Meeting (Conference) of R.S.D.L.P. Committees
2. Great Soviet Encyclopedia: «Нина»