Museum "Underground printing house 1905-1906"

This is one of the most unusual museums in Moscow. It is located in the old district of the city in a three-storey building - a typical example of a Moscow apartment house of the late XIX century. In the days of the First Russian Revolution there was a deeply secretive illegal printing house, where revolutionary leaflets and a social democratic newspaper were published.

The museum has existed since 1924. It is a unique monument of the political history of Russia during the first revolution of 1905-1907, the history of the illegal activities of the RSDLP. Its organizers were those who at one time created a secret printing house and worked in it. That is why the exposition reproduces with extraordinary accuracy all the details of the long-gone past. The basis of the museum is the memorial complex of the underground printing house, the cover for which was the shop "Trade of Caucasian fruits Kalandadze". Actually, the printing house is a cave dug in the ground, where there is a genuine printing press - you can get there through a disguised hole from a well for groundwater drain.

The restored interior of the basement, from where the printing house was opened, looks like a warehouse of boxes of fruit and cheese, at the bottom of which stacks of illegal newspapers and leaflets were placed. From the trading hall with old windows, counter and office you can get into the basement and into the living quarters, which served not only to mask the secret life of the owners, but also a resting place for printers.

The underground printing house on the Forest was never discovered by the tsarist police because of the high professionalism of the conspirators. The museum complex gives an opportunity to feel the spirit of that time, to imagine the conditions and environment in which the underground workers worked. Much attention is paid to the disclosure of the socio-psychological portrait of the Russian revolutionary, the characteristics of the security structure of the Russian Empire are given, the methods of its work to prevent the "Russian Troubles" are described.