Tobolsk is a birthplace of printing in Siberia: it was in Tobolsk that the first paper mill appeared, the first printing house in Siberia was opened, the first Siberian book and the first Siberian periodical publications were printed.

The display shows the printing history and the related issues of the political and cultural life of the city, Siberia and the country from the end of the 18th century up to the present day. The museum visitor will learn about the life of the Siberian first printers — the merchants Kornilyevs — and Sumarokovs, the first Siberian journalists; discover what the first Siberian book and magazine, published in Tobolsk in 1789, were about, and what was written in the first provincial newspaper “Tobolskiye Gubernskiye Vedomosti”, which had been published in Tobolsk since 1857. Each visitor will have a unique opportunity to see what the first Siberian book “School of Love” looked like, the only copy of which is reposited in the Library of the Academy of Sciences of the Russian Federation. General visitors will also learn the facts known only by a few philologists: the circumstances of the mystification of the publication place, and the reasons why the outstanding German poet and play writer Friedrich Schiller chose Tobolsk for his release in 1782.

​ In the museum, you can see genuine samples of Tobolsk paper manufactory products, learn how they make ink in the old days, get to know about printing production through samples of printing fonts, dies, and font characters, images of printing machines.

The photographs of printers and creators of Tobolsk newspapers of different years and periods ( “Izvestia”,”Severyanin”, “Sovetsky Sever”, “Ob’-Irtyshsky Vodnik”, “Tobolskaya Pravda”, “Stalinsky Put’”, “Lenin Yuly”, the newspaper in Tatar language, and others) will touch everyone’s feelings. To immerse in different periods of time, the museum is furnished with suitable ​ interior elements and authentic items: typewriters, telephones, pens, die pens, penwipers, inkwells, copies and originals of clerkly documents, postcards, calendars, advertising blotters, posters, copies of the main magazines, underground press, illegal literature. One of the most attractive exhibits in the museum is the office desk of the end of XIX – beginning of XX century from the governor’s house, the house of Freedom, where the family of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II was kept. The visitors will be charmed by M.S. Znamensky’s caricatures, associated with journalistic and publishing activities, his caricatured portraits of Ivan Yushkov, Kapiton Golodnikov, the editors of “Tobolskiye Gubernskiye Vedomosti”, and merchant Alexander Syromyatnikov, the publisher and editor of the first Tobolsk private newspaper “Sibirskiy Listok”. The dramatic period of the Tobolsk press (1917 – 1920s) is represented not only by the original newspapers of that time, the editions of Kolchak’s “Sibersky Strelok” and “Izvestiya Voenrevkoma and the RCP (b)”, but also by such exhibits as rifle cartridge cases and a tape from light machine-gun found in the vicinity of Tobolsk. The war and pre-war period is represented by the original editions of “Tobolskaya Pravda”: the display contains annual files for 1937 and 1940; and the only copy of “Tobolskaya Pravda” of the war years for December 2, 1944, extant as the cover of the personal file of an employee of the Tobolsk pedagogical college; and the last but not the least copies of unique documents of Tobolsk journalists and printers who were at war.

You will find much more interesting things related to the printing of modern times as well.

Working hours: Wed-Sun from 10.00 to 19.00

Closed on Mon, Tue

Address: Tobolsk, Oktyabrskaya St, 39

Phone number: 8 (3456) 275930

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