Underground Printing House of 1903 on Kaspi Street

Why is it significant?

Arrive before a modest, unassuming wooden residential house on Kaspi Street that conceals one of the most astonishing underground secrets of early twentieth-century revolutionary history.

Key Facts

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Arrive before a modest, unassuming wooden residential house on Kaspi Street that conceals one of the most astonishing underground secrets of early twentieth-century revolutionary history. Between 1903 and 1906, young Bolshevik militants, guided by Vladimir Lenin's directives and operated locally by young Joseph Stalin and Lado Ketskhoveli, established a secret underground printing press here. Buried fifteen meters beneath the earth, this clandestine workshop produced hundreds of thousands of illegal newspapers, revolutionary pamphlets, and political manifestos in Georgian, Armenian, and Russian.

Look down into the dark opening of the historic brick water well in the courtyard, which served as the ingenious secret entrance to the underground chamber. Operatives descended fifteen meters down the well shaft on an iron ladder before crawling through a concealed horizontal drainage pipe into the subterranean printing vault. Inside the damp brick room, a massive German Augsburg flatbed printing press was smuggled in piece by piece and reassembled entirely by candlelight, operating undetected beneath the feet of imperial gendarmerie.

In April 1906, Tsarist police finally raided the property following an anonymous tip, but were initially unable to locate any illicit press. Frustrated, an officer dropped an illuminated piece of burning paper down the water well, only to watch it vanish into a horizontal side tunnel, exposing the secret shaft. When police finally excavated the subterranean bunker, they discovered thousands of freshly printed copies of the Bolshevik newspaper The Proletarian and confiscated the entire operation.

Standing in the quiet suburban garden today, it is thrilling to contemplate the daring conspiratorial ingenuity that operated directly beneath this peaceful soil. The preserved printing press and underground shafts offer an extraordinary window into the clandestine revolutionary networks that eventually brought down the Russian Empire. This hidden historical site provides a gripping, authentic encounter with twentieth-century political intrigue.

Walk northwest along Kaspi and Armazi streets toward the historic Church of Saint Karapet.