Originally established for publication and dispersion of religious and philosophical literature, the press was founded in 1921 in Prague. The name of the publishing house comes from the YMCA organization established in England in 1844 by the social activist George Williams (1821-1905). In 1923 the publishing house moved its work to Berlin, where most of the Russian émigrés then lived. From 1925-1940 the publishing house was located in Paris. From 1925 to 1940, its director was Nikolai Berdyaev. The publishing house was reconstituted in 1946 and gained reputation of one of the leading ‘tamizdat’ publishing houses, printing literature, forbidden in the Soviet Union. Although Goncharova did not participate in YMCA-press’ work for it did not prioritize and could not afford illustrations in its production, we include this publishing house in this chapter because of its significant and unifying role in the print culture of Russian emigration.
