Gosizdat

(State Publishing House of the RSFSR), the first major Soviet publishing house, organized in accordance with the Statute of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of May 21, 1919. It was established in Moscow under the Peoples’ Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR in order to create a single government organization for printing. It was formed by a merger of the publishing departments of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the Moscow and Petrograd soviets, and the Peoples’ Commissariat for Education, as well as the Kommunist Publishing House and the publishing houses of the cooperative organizations.

In addition to issuing its own publications, Gosizdat was responsible for drawing up a unified publishing plan, directing other publishing houses, supervising book distribution, and planning paper production. Its first director was V. V. Vorovskii. From 1921 to 1924 the director was O. Iu. Shmidt, and in 1927, A. B. Khalatov became director. Initially, Gosizdat published primarily agitational and political literature, the fables of D. Bednyi, and Mayakovsky’s poems calling for the defense of the Soviet republic and the struggle against famine and economic ruin. In 1920, Gosizdat produced the first Soviet editions of the works of Marx and Engels, the collected works of Lenin and G. V. Plekhanov, and classics of Russian literature. After a reorganization in 1921, Gosizdat included all the largest Soviet publishing houses. In 1930 the Unified State Publishing House of the RSFSR (OGIZ) was organized on the basis of Gosizdat.