A new website for the fictional publishing house Глущенкоиздат (Gluschenkoizdat) continues the storyline of creating an image of a large, existing organization with its roots dating back to the 80s. The site structure, visual language and tone of voice are following this task.

The texts are written on behalf of the publisher in a recognizable formal language. Exhibitions are described as if they're the publisher stands at an Expos. The reference sections inherent in large publishers have been compiled in detail: internships, information for authors, branches, information about the publisher.

Visual language slightly refers to the aesthetics of the late 1980s office. So, instead of lines, hyphens are used, and all texts are typed in mostly one size and using just Quant Antiqua (98% Literaturnaya look-alike with 50% discount at the Paratype store). The site feels as if printed on an electronic typewriter. The text and graphic elements are made in blue, referring to the color of carbon paper or blue ink for the typewriter tape. A select number pages use Journal Sans (for headlines). Journal was stretched and used for the Глущенкоиздат logo.

Gluschenkoizdat even starts its own residence: an element of organization, considered in Russia as the prerogative of large and wealthy institutions. The site announced the creation of a residence for writers and researchers Pioneer Resort, located on the Baltic Sea coast, with shifts of 3 months. The residence will actually exist, the first shift has already taken place and, based on its results, a 100 copies edition of the book will be published and an event will be held in Kaliningrad.

All pages of the site start with the order number and circulation: it is assumed that site is designed for a limited amount of visits, just like the printed matter.

Poster for the Benign Duplicates book launch event at Rotorbooks, Leipzig. 70×100 cm, edition of 3 copies.

Benign Duplicates is a limited edition publication, presenting twelve days from the diaries (1962) and photographs (1954–1993) from the archive of Nikolai Kozakov. Under the moniker of publishing House Gluschenkoizdat, Kozakov’s notes and images were processed in various productions including this English edition, an audio drama and a website with the same diary excerpts as used for this booklet.

(...) In writing down his every step, Kozakov remains unknowable, like outer space — the conquest of which he devotes so much attention to in his notes. Who is he? A man of the ‘60s? An intellectual wretch? Your father’s older brother? Anti-Semite? Loser? Poet? Extraterrestrial? The diary is clearly not intended for anyone else to read: Kozakov writes it for himself and remains hermitically sealed within its text, exposing the reader to the principal and tragic impenetrability of “the Other.” Kozakov’s peculiar relationship with reality has no parallel in today’s world. It is like a message in a bottle that he sent not 50, but 500 years ago. (...) — book cover text by Maria Kuvshinova

1962, Soviet Union. On the brink of inevitable coming of communism, Nikolai Kozakov, a truck driver from the Gorky region, steals from the collective farm property, goes to Kazakhstan to work on the gas pipeline construction and is treated for stuttering by hypnosis in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov. Behind the ostentatious masculinity — he hunts, rides a motorcycle and is constantly drunk — Kozakov hides a secret life of a man with developed taste, a subtle observer, a student of ancient mythology. He writes poetry, takes photographs, pities himself and falls in love, perhaps too often. — Grigor Atanesian, Gluschenkoizdat publishers

Text and headlines are set with Journal (Paratype), and Akzidenz Grotesk is used for the introduction paragraph on the book cover and for captions. A few numerals use Journal Sans.

Edited by K. Gluschenko
Translated from Russian, by B. McGarr and M. Shipley.
200×260 mm, 128 pages, first edition of 10 copies
Order № 184.

Hotel Venets was part of a larger complex of buildings, that were specially constructed to mark the anniversary in Ulyanovsk, a small Soviet town formerly known as Simbirsk, renamed in honour of its most famous son, Lenin (born Ulyanov). A photo album discovered amid the archives of the local history museum, published by the Leningrad architects who designed the hotel, contained photographs of the hotel when it first opened, revealing its original interiors. During its 47 years of operation, the hotel underwent many distinct renovations. For the exhibition Space Force Construction, I used one of these photographs as a reference for reconstructing a three-room luxury suite within the palazzo in Venice. Accompanying this is a selection of postcards featuring photographs of today’s Ulyanovsk, titled Ascension to ‘Olympus’ (a rooftop bar called “Olympus” recently opened in the Venets). These images capture my experience of travelling to Ulyanovsk on the eve of the centennial anniversary of the October Revolution. Checking into the hotel, I worked my way up from the first floor to the very top, spending one night in each room, until at last, on New Year’s Eve, I reached ‘Olympus’.

This wonderful book documents the architectural results of another Soviet anniversary – the celebrations of the centenary of Lenin’s birth in Ulyanovsk, formerly Simbirsk, the small city on the Volga where he was born. Told by the authorities in Moscow that the ‘door would be open’ for them to modernise their mainly wooden, one-storey, Tsarist city for the duration of the celebrations, and that they’d close it immediately when it was over, the local Party rushed to build a Museum, a Library, a Palace of Culture, housing, an Airport and the high-rise Hotel Venets before the tap of money and resources was turned off. In its first year of opening, two Poles, 70 Britons, and more than 3,000 East Germans arrived to stay in the Hotel Venets, and we get to read the inventory of difficult questions they answered (‘can we see how people live in those little wooden houses?’), and find out how hotel staff took it out on the guests. — Owen Hatherley, The Architectural Review

Published by Gluschenkoizdat.

Homepage header

Kozakov keeps a methodical record of his life. Starting at fifteen years of age, he writes his diary: detailed notes penned in 96-page standard exercise books, each entry beginning with air temperature and wind direction, describing occurrences at work and at home, and switching back and forth between musings on love and his place in society.

Moscow-based publishing house Gluschenkoizdat have come into possession of Nikolai Kozakov’s notebooks for the year 1962. Following extensive work on their transcription and preparation for print, the publishers present the present volume for the edification of readers, in conjunction with a radio drama. The publication of Николай Козаков. Дневник. 1962 (Nikolay Kozakov: Diaries. 1962) has been timed to coincide with the publishers’ summary exhibition Our days are rich and bright.

See the website at 1962.gluschenkoizdat.ru. There is also an extract in English, covering twelve days from the diary.

Art direction: Kirill Gluschenko
Designers: A. Glushkova, A. Moskovsky
Illustration: A. Koltchina

Chapter header (January)

English extract

Homepage footer

Chapter index

Book cover, 170 × 215 mm, 624 pages, ISBN 978-5-9906255-3-2, edition of 1,000. Gluschenkoizdat, 2016.

Cover of the radioplay, 2 LP, 88 min 41 sec, 8 pages booklet, edition of 300. Gluschenkoizdat, 2016