There is little doubt about the presence of imported Linotype machines in Russia in the early days of the Soviet Union, since at least one Linotype handbook was published there as early as 1931: D. V. Melnikov’s Linotip i rabota na nem (“The Linotype and how to work with it”).
In the 1930s, however, local production of Linotype machines was started at the МАКСА ГЕЛЬЦА (Maksa Geltsa) Factory in Leningrad. This factory formerly belonged to an engineer and entrepreneur by the name Semenov. That factory had earlier been producing precision engineering machines for the cigarette industry as well as precision weighing scales. It was nationalised in 1919 and renamed Maksa Geltsa Factory in 1922, in honour of Max Hoelz, a German Komintern agitator who had been sentenced to life in prison in Germany for taking part in a failed uprising the previous year. The first Soviet Linotype machines likely rolled off the production line in 1932. They were branded using the factory’s name: Maksa Geltsa (МАКСА ГЕЛЬЦА).
Figure: The Maksa Geltsa typesetter.
It is unclear whether Soviet engineers obtained any Linotype blueprints or if they simply disassembled an original Linotype and copied it part by part. Early models of the Soviet Linotype do indeed look like close imitations of genuine Linotype models. However, the Soviet Union soon developed its own models of slug composition casters. The Models were identified by the Cyrillic upper-case letter Н (which is the equivalent of the letter N in the Latin alphabet), followed by a hyphen and a number.¹ (Models are listed on this page.)
But the first edition of V. V. Popov’s classic letterpress manual Obshij kurs poligrafii (“A General Course in Printing”), published in 1934, still only shows genuine Linotype and Intertype models. The Maksa Geltsa machines probably weren’t in widespread use yet, at the time of writing.
During (or shortly after) World War II, the factory in Leningrad saw its official name changed to Ленинградский завод полиграфических машин ('Leningradskii zavod poligraficheskikh mashin', 'Leningrad printing machines factory'). Its name is often informally shortened into the acronym Ленполиграфмаш (Lenpoligrafmash). From then on, Soviet Linotypes were no longer sold under the brand name Maksa Geltsa. The nameplate of each machine now featured the new name of the factory. Later machines were sold under the name Neotype, Novatype or just Rossija (Russia).
Text written by Victor Thibout, based upon his research into foreign Linotypes.
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