Nina

Nina 

the code name of an underground press in Baku established in July 1901 by the Baku Iskra group, including V. Z. Ketskhoveli, L. B. Krasin, N. P. Kozerenko, A. S. Enukidze, and L. E. Gal’perin. The press was organized with the direct participation of V. I. Lenin and the Iskra editorial board and with the assistance of the Tbilisi revolutionary Social Democrats. The press received instructions from the Iskra editorial board and also served the party organizations of the Caucasus. It printed the illegal Georgian newspaper Brdzola and published pamphlets and leaflets in Russian, Georgian, and Armenian. Owing to the possibility of detection by the authorities, the press suspended its work from April to December 1902.

Beginning in 1903 the press came under the direction of the Organizing Committee for the Convocation of the Second Congress of the RSDLP and the Caucasian Union Committee of the RSDLP and printed the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. After the congress Nina became the press of the Central Committee of the RSDLP, printing some 1.5 million copies of various illegal publications between November 1903 and November 1905. Among those who worked in the printing shop at various times were I. B. Bolkvadze, V. G. Tsuladze, A. Kh. Khumarian, I. F. Sturua, T. T. Enukidze, and G. Z. Lelashvili. The Third Congress of the RSDLP (1905) commended the work of the press. It was closed in January 1906 by a decision of the Central Committee of the RSDLP.

REFERENCES

Lenin, V. I. Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed. vol. 6, p. 298; vol. 46, pp. 112–13, 118.
Enukidze, A. S. “Istoriia organizatsii i raboty nelegal’nykh tipografii RSDRP na Kavkaze za vremia ot 1900 po 1906 gg.” In the collection Tekhnika bol’shevistskogo podpol’ia, issue 2. Moscow-Leningrad, 1924.
Krasin, L. B. Dela davno minuvshikh dnei, 3rd ed. Moscow, 1934.
Sarkisov, A. Bakinskaia tipografiia leninskoi “Iskry.” Baku, 1961.