A huge contribution to the development of book business and, accordingly, literacy was made by the first printer Ivan Fyodorov. This man’s life was not easy, as his activities undermined the economic well-being of scribes of books, but he did not give up, and in the end he achieved his goal. Perhaps we owe it to him that several centuries ago books became available for almost everyone, and not just for rich people.
Relations with his clergy were not the warmest. In those years, books were manually copied by monks, so the development of book printing threatened to drastically reduce church revenues. There lived the first printer Ivan Fyodorov during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, who hired foreign masters of printing. However, Fyodorov himself at that time was only a student, and worked in one of the new printing houses. Ivan Fyodorov was well versed in other areas besides the printing house. So, he made a considerable contribution to the development of artillery, and invented the multi-barrel mortar, which had no analogues.
It is not for nothing that the first printer Ivan Fyodorov bears this honorary title – it was he who printed the first book in Russia, at least from among those whose creation date is not in doubt among historians. The son of I. Fyodorov indirectly followed in the footsteps of his father, becoming a bookseller. The first Bible in Church Slavonic was printed thanks to Ivan Fyodorov. It is known for certain that before he launched his printing house, foreign masters invited by the tsar already printed books in Moscow, but information about them was not preserved. The life of Ivan Fyodorov is still not very widely known. So, no one knows what kind he was, when he was born, etc. It is only known that he was a native of the Moscow principality. Sometimes he is referred to as Ivan Fyodorovich Moskvitin, since there were practically no surnames at that time, and the first printer took as such the derivative of the city in which he worked.
The creation of his first printed book took him eleven months. Despite the benevolent attitude of the tsar, Ivan Fyodorov was repaired by various boyars and representatives of the clergy, so he had to move to the Principality of Lithuania. True, he did not stay there for long – his patron, the local hetman, went crazy, and the first printer had to move again, this time to Lviv, in Ukraine. Despite the above problems with high church officials of that era, it was the priests who contributed to the development of the case of Ivan Fyodorov. When he had money to open a printing house, they themselves, and with the help of the parishioners, raised the necessary amount for him.
