12 октября 1909 года в Москве открыли памятник первопечатнику Ивану Федорову

It was established at the initiative of the Moscow Archaeological society for money collected by subscription, and executed by the project of the sculptor Sergei Volnukhin. The bronze pioneer printer stood in Teatralny Proezd not far from the Print Yard, where in 1564 he, together with Pyotr Mstislavets, published the first printed book in Russian.

Probably everyone knows who Ivan Fedorov is. It was he who became Gutenberg's Russian colleague when Tsar Ivan the Terrible was concerned with the problem of supplying churches with accurate books. Indeed, heresy could have originated from many mistakes that they were made in handwritten books.

Ivan Vasilievich ordered “to arrange construction of the house dedicated to printing on the money from the royal treasury,” so that “the holy books set out righteous.” The Print Yard was established in Kitay-gorod near St. Nicholas Monastery. Meanwhile, Ivan Fyodorov, the deacon of the Church of St. Nicholas Gostunsky in the Moscow Kremlin, became a widower. The deacon was not an easy man: there is even information that he was from the Belarusian gentry family, studied in Europe and had a bachelor's degree from the University of Krakow, incomprehensible for the mind of a Russian serf.

Having lost his wife, the deacon was supposed to take monastic vows, but he didn’t do it, and, with the blessing of Macarius, Metropolitan of Moscow, started working in the printing yard. He managed to learn the tricky business of book printing. On March 1, 1564 the first accurately dated Russian printed book, The Apostle, was published in tsar's printing house on Nikolskaya Street. A liturgical book, a part of the New Testament, contained the Acts of the Apostles and their Epistles – hence the name. The success of Russian book printing was not to the liking of the scribes, for it threatened to take away their bread and butter. Ivan Fedorov and his assistant Pyotr Mstislavets fled to Lithuania, then Ivan Fedorov moved to Lvov, and then to the city of Ostrog, where he printed the famous Ostrog Bible – the first complete Bible in Church Slavonic language. So, now he is considered not only Russian, but also Ukrainian printing pioneer.