The founder of printing in the Tambov Governorate was the well-known enlightener Gavriil Derzhavin, who arrived in Tambov from Moscow in 1786 to take the post of viceroy. Gavriil Romanovich strongly disliked the fact that copyists delayed the work of institutions by slowly reproducing documents. He decided to establish the first printing shop for clerical production.
In 1787, several trial orders appeared in the form of forms and announcements. A year later, Tambov began publishing the first provincial newspaper in Russia, “Gubernskie Vedomosti.” It contained information about passing “notable persons” and the movement of military units, and reported prices for grain and essential goods.
In 1912, a hydroelectric power station was built on the Tsna River canal, and the first electric poles began to be installed on the city streets. The printing house was renamed “Electro-Typolithography of the Tambov Governorate Administration.”
In early 1922, it was decided to merge all Tambov printing houses, making them branches of a single State Printing House under the jurisdiction of the Printing Department of the Supreme Council of the National Economy. On March 17, 1922, State Printing House No. 2 (the Soviet Printing House) and A.N. Vasilyev’s printing shop, which had been merged into it back in 1917, were to be named “Proletarsky Svetoch.”
Until the mid-1920s, “Proletarsky Svetoch” mainly printed newspapers and forms for Soviet institutions. In early 1922, the “Izvestia of the Tambov Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies” published here were renamed “Tambovskaya Pravda.”