Nikolay Ivanovich Sytin was born on February 16, 1879. He was the second child in the family of Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin and the eldest son. Nikolay graduated from the Commercial School on Ostozhenka and the Higher Technical School. He became a chemist and a specialist in paper production. His younger brother Dmitry described Ivan as follows, “Nikolay is quiet, shy, completely absorbed in solving technical issues and in the field of applied chemistry and mechanics.” In 1906, Ivan Sytin made his eldest son a member of his company’s board and appointed him head of typesetters and printers, an important position. Nikolay served as a technical supervisor.

A letter from Nikolay to his father dated 1913 has been preserved. It read,

Before the Revolution of 1917, Nikolay allegedly participated in the secret publication of the “Modern Socio-Political and Economic Dictionary” in his father’s printing house. Subsequently, Sytin was involved in a lawsuit: in the dictionary Karl Marx was called a “great teacher”, his “Communist Manifesto” was described as a set of “enduring” ideas, and a number of his predictions were deemed historically inevitable. At the same time autocracy was defined as “the uncontrolled power of the bureaucracy”.

From 1915, the eldest son of Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin was the director of the board, and in 1916 he was elected a glasny (deputy) of the Moscow City Duma. During the celebration of the 10^thanniversary of the October Revolution in 1927, Nikolay, as the technical director of the publishing house of the “Iskra” cooperative, took part in the publication of a book entitled “Rebirth” which included detailed biographical information about political figures and leaders. But by that time many of the revolutionaries mentioned in the book were declared enemies of the people by Stalin, so Nikolay was accused of “economic espionage and undermining Soviet power.” The Board of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) sentenced the eldest son of Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin to 10 years of labor camps, later this measure was replaced by five years of “free settlement” in Siberia.