Yakov of Helem's lyrics once seemed to me. King of the mountain of books: how the Eksmo publishing house absorbed competitors from AST. Awards and prizes
Two destinies
STUDIES
Yakov KHELEMSKY
Two destinies
Esenin wrote in his “Iron Mirgorod”: “Honest mother! How mediocre are Mayakovsky’s poems about America! Is it possible to express this granite and iron power in words? This is a song without words."
Recently, while re-reading familiar lines, I was suddenly puzzled: Yesenin visited the States with Duncan in 1922-1923, and Mayakovsky made an overseas trip in 1925. What “mediocre” poems of his are we talking about? I started calling my friends, and they reminded me that in the poem “150,000,000,” completed in the twentieth, there are chapters where Vladimir Vladimirovich, who had not yet been to America, honors this country and its president Wilson with all his might. This is what Yesenin meant.
As for the impossibility of expressing “granite and iron power” in words, Sergei Alexandrovich nevertheless tried to do this, though not in poetry, but in prose, and, I must say, not without success. Much in “Iron Mirgorod” is not outdated today.
No, he was not unconditionally delighted with what he saw, as evidenced by the brilliantly found name. But his notes completely lack “Soviet pride” and the tendency to look down on the “bourgeoisie.”
Yesenin’s observations are contradictory, sometimes very insightful; respect coexists with irony in them. Paying tribute to the technical excellence and outward civilization of the States, the poet recalls with involuntary bitterness our backwardness, and judges it sensibly, and sometimes mercilessly: “It’s too dark on our streets to understand what the electric light of Broadway is. We are used to living in the light of the moon, burning candles in front of icons, but not in front of people.”
The release at the end of the phrase is mine. As it is figuratively said here about the primordial custom of honoring saints, idolizing the abstract concept of “people,” but not lighting a candle in front of a real person, neglecting her needs and rights. How modern it sounds!
However, in “Iron Mirgorod” there are lines where Yesenin absolutely agrees with Mayakovsky. Let us recall the poem “Brooklyn Bridge,” where Vladimir Vladimirovich, who has already seen the vastness of the ocean, pays tribute to the design genius of the Americans: “If the end of the world comes, chaos will cut the planet into a luster, and only one will remain, this bridge raised above the dust of death, then as if from the bones The standing lizards in the museum are becoming thinner than needles, so with this bridge of centuries a geologist would be able to recreate real days... I watch how an Eskimo looks at the train, I bite into it as a tick bites into my ear. Brooklyn Bridge... Yes... This is a thing.”
And here are a few phrases from Yesenin’s essay: “If you look at the merciless power of reinforced concrete, at the Brooklyn Bridge suspended between two cities, the height of which is equal to the height of twenty-story buildings, no one will be sorry that wild Hiawatha does not hunt deer here.”
The peasant son and the convinced urbanist wrote almost the same thing. But this did not stop Yesenin from expressing his opinion about the inner essence of the inhabitants of the States, who, in his opinion, were deprived of soulfulness and any thoughts: “The dominion of the dollar ate away in them all the desire for any complex issues. The American, immersed in “buisness,” does not want to know the rest.”
In fact, Sergei Alexandrovich repeats the same thing in a letter to his sister Ekaterina. With the addition that these businessmen “don’t give a damn about art.” Except the Music Hall.” (If in the last phrase “music hall” is replaced with modern expressions: “pop”, “talk show”, it will remind a lot of what is happening in our country today.)
Yesenin's moods change quickly. After the lines about the callousness of Americans, completely different arguments arise. In the letter to Mariengof we read: “...Why the hell do people need this soul, which in Russia is measured in pounds. A completely unnecessary thing - this soul in dirty felt boots, with dirty hair. With sadness, with fear, but I’m already beginning to say to myself: button up your soul, Yesenin, it’s as obscene as unbuttoned trousers.” 
And suddenly the poet again echoes Mayakovsky. Just as piercingly as the lines: “I would like to live and die in Paris, if there were no such land - Moscow,” Yesenin’s letter, addressed a little later to the same Mariengof, is perceived: “The best thing I have seen in this world is this Moscow after all. You are probably sleeping now when I write this letter to you. Because it’s night in Russia now. And here it is day. I see your sweet, cold iron stove, you covered with a fur coat.
My God, it was better to eat floating smoke with my eyes than to be here.”
But let's take a break from American impressions. Let us reflect on the coexistence of two great poets in the literature of that time. They, so different, appeared almost simultaneously, as if by command from above. Without them, Russian literature of the tens and twenties would have looked much poorer.
Whatever you say, Yesenin and Mayakovsky knew each other’s worth. And, in fact, there was no hostility between them. They were so self-sufficient and popular that serious jealousy or envy could not arise. Sometimes there was an exchange of mutual jabs, addressed orally or in print, but this was dictated not so much by personal as by group interests.
Probably, remembering Yesenin’s attack in “Iron Mirgorod,” Mayakovsky, in his famous monologue delivered in front of the Pushkin monument, listing his fellow writers, did not fail to say this: “Here is Yesenin, a pack of muzhikovskys. Laughter! A cow wearing baby gloves. Once you listen... It's from the choir! Balalaika player!”
Rather, the edge of this disparaging statement is directed at the “peasant pack.”
This is confirmed by the later confession of Vladimir Vladimirovich: “We argued with Yesenin often, blaming him mainly for the imagism that had grown around.” It wasn’t he who was annoying, it was the environment that disgusted him. “...I met with Yesenin several times, the meetings were elegiac, without the slightest discord... Recently, Yesenin even developed some obvious sympathy for us (Lefovites), he went to Aseev, called me on the phone, sometimes I was just trying to get caught.”
Are comments needed?
I will say more, for all their dissimilarity, everyday and creative, it is not difficult to detect common features among them.
Firstly, the influence they have on readers, the massive interest in them, the controversy surrounding them. Long before Yevtushenko, they had the right to say: “A poet in Russia is more than a poet.”
Secondly, Yesenin’s attraction to the Lefovites is not surprising. She made herself known at an early age.
“Beasts, beasts, come to me and cry out your anger into the cups of my hands! Isn't it time for the moon to stop lapping up the clouds in the sky?<...>If hunger from the destroyed walls clings to my hair, I will eat half of my leg myself, and give half to you to suck.”
“I purposely walk unkempt, with my head like a kerosene lamp on my shoulders. I like to illuminate your leafless autumn souls in the darkness.”
Let's break up these aggressive tirades with a ladder or form a column - why not the novice Mayakovsky?
And this is Yesenin. The first stanzas from the poem “Mare’s Ships” (1919), by the way, illustrated by the poet’s friend, the artist Yakulov. Second excerpt from Confessions of a Hooligan (1920).
We read further: “I will stretch my legs to Egypt, I will cut horseshoes of torment from you... I will scream at both poles of the snowhorns with the pincers of my hands. I will press down the equator with my knee and, amidst the cry of storms and whirlwinds, I will break our mother earth in half, like a golden roll” (“Inonia”, 1918).
“It’s enough to celebrate with meekness of the face, whether you like it or not, you know, take it. It’s good when twilight teases you and pours the bloody broom of dawn into your fat asses” (“Sorokoust”, 1920). Do you feel a clear passion for the Budelians?
Georgy Adamovich spoke about these coincidences from afar in Paris: “Everyone recognizes Blok’s influence in Yesenin, the influence of Mayakovsky seems to be unnoticed... It is incorrect, historically and objectively, to see something personal in Yesenin’s rhymed abuse. It’s Mayakovsky screaming in him.”
And here, in our homeland, Ivan Nikanorovich Rozanov noted in surprise that “a poet of the people” imitates Mayakovsky.
Imitation? only if? There is also a similarity of temperaments, sometimes expressed in the manner of reading their poems. Let us remember the famous recording of the reading of “Pugachev” (“Take me, take me to him!”).
There are other facets of this relationship.
There is a famous stanza by Mayakovsky, refuted by him, but forever remaining in our memory as evidence of his vulnerability: “I want to be understood by my country. If I’m not understood, well, I’ll pass by my native land like slanting rain.”
Could Yesenin write this? Of course he could. Let us at least remember these lines of his: “Let us understand everything that we saw, what happened, what happened in the country, and forgive us where we were bitterly offended through someone else’s and through our fault.”
In the lyrical revelations of both poets one can hear tragedy, one can hear, sometimes loudly expressed, sometimes muffled, resentment.
After Yesenin’s death, many opinions were expressed about what led the poet to such a cruel end. Some boiled it all down to drinking and a bohemian lifestyle, others gossiped about being separated from the life of the people (!). Many years later, absurd, and foul-smelling, fabrications arose that the poet was killed, although his dying eight-line exists.
Many mourning poems appeared at that time. Perhaps not everyone remembers these rhyming obituaries now.
But the poetic requiem created by Mayakovsky still sounds strong and mournful. Re-reading this poem, you feel that the author has “a lump of grief in his throat”: “Now the tongue will be locked in the teeth forever. It is difficult and inappropriate to develop mysteries. Among the people, among the linguist, a sonorous drunken apprentice died. And they carry funeral scraps of poetry.”
Vladimir Vladimirovich condemned not only hasty poetry, but also the puritanical statements of other critics, parodying their opinion: “If only you could replace bohemia with class, class would influence you and there would be no fights. Well, does the class fill their thirst with kvass? Cool, he’s not a fool for a drink either.”
Sadness, tenderness and, of course, controversy: “It’s better to die from vodka than from boredom.” Every line is an aphorism.
It’s worth re-reading Mayakovsky’s article “How to Make Poems.” After all, it is all dedicated to how the posthumous dedication to Yesenin was written. This thing is well known, so I want to draw attention only to those lines where it is explained why two words in the first stanza have been changed, because this replacement indicates a high spiritual sensitivity, seemingly unexpected for Mayakovsky, who is accustomed to speaking out sharply and directly.
We are talking about the initial version of the line: “No advance for you, no woman, no pub.” Vladimir Vladimirovich writes: “It is necessary to cut back: “not a woman.” Why? Because these women are alive. To call them that when the majority of Yesenin’s lyrics are dedicated to them with great tenderness is tactless. That’s why it’s false, that’s why it doesn’t sound.”
Holy words!
How low morality has fallen if, after the death of Mayakovsky himself, buckets of dirt were poured out on the women he loved. And first of all, of course, Lilya Brik got it. But we will return to this later.
A lot of things have been written in connection with the departure of Vladimir Vladimirovich. Some explanations for what happened sounded convincing: a painful condition, the indifference of colleagues to the “20 Years of Work” exhibition, general fatigue, a break with the Lefovites and a worthless entry into RAPP, the poet’s confession - “a love boat crashed into everyday life,” and finally, the refusal of a Paris visa.
Nevertheless, many years later, as in the case of Yesenin, there were provocateurs who put forward a version of the murder. Again, despite the poet’s suicide note, which was published many times, sounding like a brilliant ending to his creative presence in this controversial world. At the end of his life, irony did not change the poet. Consider the note to the request not to gossip - “the dead man didn’t like it.” Not noticeable to everyone, but amazing scrupulousness. The pun “the incident is ruined” belonged to the witty Argo. And, in order not to be posthumously accused of plagiarism, Mayakovsky clarifies: “As they say...” Finally, in this short message, without fear of possible slander, the poet includes Lilya Brik and Veronica Polonskaya in his family. Moreover, Lilya Yuryevna tops this list. A challenge was thrown to ordinary people, puritans, and enemies.
Not so long ago, in 1999, thanks to the Dekom publishing house (Nizhny Novgorod), the manuscript of Vasily Abgarovich Katanyan, a close friend of Mayakovsky, a long-time researcher of his work, and, finally, a companion in Lily Yuryevna’s later years, was published. The manuscript lay on the shelf for a quarter of a century (!). The book is called "The Printed Bottle". From the ocean of forgetfulness and indifference, a vessel was extracted and uncorked, containing many invaluable details and thoughtful observations, previously unknown documents. The section “Gloomy Chronicle” is especially significant, and in it the chapter “Operation Ogonyok” stands out, which tells about the vile series of slanderous articles published in the late sixties on the pages of Sofronov’s magazine.
These slander caused outrage among many famous cultural figures. Katanyan brings protest letters from K. Simonov, I. Andronikov, S. Kirsanov, B. Slutsky to the secretariat of the Writers' Union, to Izvestia, and to the then governing bodies. Result? Either not a word in response, or evasive replies. The slanderers went unpunished; polemics with them were considered “inappropriate.”
The book includes an article by Elsa Triolet, published in the Parisian newspaper Les Lettres françaises, which exposed shameless lies and malicious slander against Lilya Brik. This convincing rebuke conveyed, among other things, one important detail. The slanderers spread the myth that the poet was denied a Paris visa due to the active efforts of Lily Yuryevna, who was jealous of Mayakovsky for Tatyana Yakovleva and feared that he would remain in France.
“Now I’ll tell you why Mayakovsky was not given a visa,” wrote Triolet. “They didn’t give it because he didn’t ask for it.” And even if he had asked for it, he would have later refused this request.”
It turns out that by that time Yakovleva was getting ready to get married, and Vladimir Vladimirovich became aware of this.
Of course, the article did not appear in our newspapers. But Elsa Triolet’s correctness was confirmed by later investigations.
Vasily Vasilyevich Katanyan, who prepared the manuscript for publication and commented on it, reports in one of his notes: “...Journalist V. Skoryatin, who conducted thorough excavations in the Lubyanka and People’s Commissariat archives in the nineties, proved that the poet did not apply for an exit visa. Mayakovsky understood that Yakovleva would not go with him to the USSR, and he had no intention of becoming a defector - no matter how passionate he was about Tatyana, he understood that without language he was nothing abroad.”
The saddest thing is that interference in the personal lives of the luminaries of poetry continued in subsequent years. Here it is appropriate to recall another, also obscene intrusion into the relationship of Boris Pasternak with Olga Ivinskaya. We will not affirm the holiness of this beauty, but she was dear to Boris Leonidovich. And her stay in the camps and the accusations brought against her in connection with the publication of Doctor Zhivago were primarily aimed at frightening Pasternak and shortening his life.
But regardless of everything, no one had the right to humiliate in print a woman, thanks to whom such lyrical masterpieces as “Winter Night”, “Hop”, “Autumn”, “Eve”, “Untitled”, “Summer in the City” were created.
Anticipating attacks and insults, Boris Leonidovich wrote in “Date”: “But who are we and where are we from, when gossip remains from all those years, but we are not in the world.”
Here, by the way, another statement by Pasternak in prose, concerning Natalya Nikolaevna Goncharova, will come in handy. After all, even she was at different times addressed with barbs by memoirists and Pushkin scholars.
“It always seemed to me,” Boris Leonidovich wrote about this, “that I would cease to understand Pushkin if I admitted that he needed our understanding more than Natalya Nikolaevna.”
We can only learn from the classics of moral purity. Especially these days, when compromising evidence has come into force, and reporters’ impudence knows no bounds.
But let's return to the reasons for Mayakovsky's dramatic departure. For those who are unable to understand one of them, perhaps the main one, I advise you to turn to the informative, also very late book by Yuri Annenkov, “The Diary of My Meetings,” with the significant subtitle “The Cycle of Tragedies.”
Annenkov, a brilliant artist who created a portrait gallery of outstanding figures of Russian culture, also turned out to be a gifted and objective memoirist.
Having emigrated from Russia, actively rejecting Soviet reality, which had deprived him of his homeland, he, it would seem, should have sharply condemned Mayakovsky, who stepped on the throat of his talent in the name of vicious ideas. But, appreciating the creative capabilities of the great poet, captivated by his personality, he communicated with him on friendly terms during Vladimir Vladimirovich’s visits to France. Here is what Annenkov wrote about these meetings: “The feeling of friendship and respect for Mayakovsky is still alive in me. I will never say anything bad about him. But I will inevitably have to talk about his tragic fate, the fate of a poet in the Soviet Union.”
This is what has been said about Mayakovsky in his last years. The poet realized, in the artist’s words, “that you can be a “pure-blooded communist,” but at the same time completely break with the “Communist Party” and remain helplessly alone.”
Evidence of this is “The Bedbug” and “Bathhouse” - satires on the existing reality, attempts to say that the programmed ideal is distorted by bureaucrats who use power for personal gain. “The Bedbug,” brilliantly staged by Meyerhold, was soon removed from the repertoire. Vsevolod Emilievich’s desire to resume the performance in 1936 ended in failure. “Bath”, even more anti-party, shown for the first time on March 19, 1930 (a month before the suicide), was criticized and also soon banned.
Let's read Annenkov's lines about his last meeting with Mayakovsky in Nice, in 1929, lines that are impossible to read without deep compassion: “We went to a cozy restaurant near the beach. Despite the modest appearance of this inn, the bouillabaisse was wonderful. We chatted, as always, a little about everything and, of course, about the Soviet Union. Mayakovsky, among other things, asked me when I would finally return to Moscow? I replied that I didn’t think about it anymore because I wanted to remain an artist. Mayakovsky patted me on the shoulder and, immediately turning gloomy, said in a hoarse voice:
– And I’m coming back... because I’ve already stopped being a poet.
- Now I'm... an official.
The restaurant maid, frightened by sobs, ran up:
- What's happened? What's happening?
Mayakovsky turned to her and, smiling harshly, answered in Russian:
– Nothing, nothing... I just choked on a bone.
Leaving the restaurant, we shook hands:
-See you in Paris.
-In Paris.
Mayakovsky went to his hotel, I went to mine. From then on I never saw Mayakovsky again.”
Many poems are dedicated to the memory of Vladimir Vladimirovich, as well as Yesenin. Among the authors we find high names.
I have selected three poems from this stream, distinguished by the fact that they are addressed to both poets. I would like to conclude the pages I offer with excerpts from these double dedications. The authors of the poems are very different both in their writing style and in the characteristics of the path traveled, but each of them heartfeltly shared their love and sorrow.
Marina Tsvetaeva, as you know, also voluntarily died under unbearable circumstances. But just as Mayakovsky at one time reproached Yesenin for his unexpected suicide, so Marina Ivanovna, although she reacted with understanding to what happened, still expressed her opinion: “It’s not good!” A passionate and confused dialogue ensued. Let us listen once again to these intermittent lines, to this impulsive rhythm: “To the Soviet nobles at the full Synod:
“- Great, Seryozha!
- Great, Volodya!
- Are you tired?
- A little.
- In general?
- Personally.
- Was there a shooting?
- It’s usual.
- Was it burning?
- Great.
- So, then, he lived?
- A pass in some way...
- It’s no good, Seryozha!
- It’s no good, Volodya! Do you remember how he swore at me in his full stage bass voice?
- Okay...
- Here they are, a boat, a love boat! Is it really because of the skirt?
- Worse because of vodka. Swollen face since then and on edge? - It’s no good, Seryozha.
- That’s no good, Volodya... And what’s on Russey - on mother?
- That is, where?
- What's new in SS?
- They are building... A new bridge has been laid. Yes, washed away by the flood. Everything is the same, Seryozha!
“Everything is the same, Volodya!”
Brief, aphoristic, cordial, Konstantin Vanshenkin is a poet of a generation also tragic, almost entirely destroyed at the front: “Fields with flowering crops and streets of stone space... They were often pushed together and are still being pushed together. They casually hit each other. And with joy - on the contrary. And their shining word lives unfadingly. One - the scythe has been ringing since ancient times. Another - workshops are thundering in the distance. They, like a city and a village, could not be without each other.”
Yaroslav Smelyakov, whose fate was merciless and contradictory, full of successes and errors, disappearances and returns, after the war, captivity and another stay in the Gulag catacombs, wrote simple and inconsolable lines: “We had two singers for a long time. The voice of a pipe and a trumpet... A blizzard is blowing over Leningrad. In the cramped room the pipe is silent. April is shining in Moscow windows. The revolver's bullet hit the target. The eyes shine dully and sternly. The sheets of newspapers were wet with blood... Reverently, open the volumes. Between the covers there is light and darkness...”
In these passages, which sound so different, in my opinion, they reflect what I tried to say in my essay. Before us are two glorious and cruel destinies, two open souls, two poets, unshakably included not only in the literary, but also in the universal history of our super-turbulent modernity.
[nominal owner - Cyprus company A.A.B.P. Advanced Acievement Books Publishers Ltd. The co-owners of this offshore, according to the Cyprus registry, are Andrey Gertsev and Yakov Helemsky (33.35 each), Oleg Bartenev and Igor Feoktistov (9.52 each), Yuri Khatskevich (9.51%), Yuri Deikalo (4. 75%)], is sinking and, perhaps, will be absorbed by its only sworn competitor - Eksmo. This will change the entire book business. There are different scenarios for the development of events. But it is already obvious that box-office authors in Russia will no longer be paid insane fees.Capturing the Empire
Two weeks ago, Vedomosti and Kommersant talked about the upcoming merger of Eksmo and AST. Leading publishing houses (AST has the largest publishing portfolio [every fifth book in Russia is published by this publishing house], "Eksmo" - the leader in circulation) have long been sharpening their teeth on each other. They fought over authors, bought up independent publishers and, as market participants say, at various times tried to set the security forces against each other.
The Federal Tax Service claims that the AST group owes the budget almost 8 billion rubles. The company does not have that kind of money - this amount is more than 2 billion rubles. exceeds its annual turnover.
“The AST group is structured according to a scheme that was widely used throughout the 1990s: producing structures, that is, publishing houses, sell copies with a small markup to wholesale structures, and they, in turn, set a large markup and accumulate the bulk of the money,” explains First Deputy Head of the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications Vladimir Grigoriev.—And this, of course, is an obvious setup. Nobody forbids optimizing taxes, but we agreed with all major publishing houses to abandon black schemes back in the first half of the 2000s. AST is the only exception."
[Vrez Ruspres: inright.ru, 05/23/2012 Observers of the APN news agency drew attention to the strange coincidence of claims from tax authorities regarding the so-called. “gray circulation”, that is, tax evasion, to the AST publishing house, and the declaration of the Russian Book Union, which is controlled by the owner of Eksmo Novikov. Let us recall that at the end of April, the Russian Book Union published a declaration of intent “For a transparent market”, which was signed by all members of the union, except for AST. The union said in a statement that the agreement “is intended to create an environment of intolerance towards violations of the law by unscrupulous market participants” who are “suspected of economic offenses, as well as the use of shell companies to evade taxes and legalize illegally obtained profits.” In fact, this document turned out to be directed against AST, which had tax problems.
According to APN observers, almost everyone uses gray schemes in the publishing business, including Eksmo, against which a corresponding investigation was also initiated several years ago. Therefore, simultaneous pressure from the tax authorities and the main competitor, coupled with information that appeared in the media about the merger of two giants of the book market, suggests an attempt by Novikov to reduce the price of AST, driving this publishing house into a corner.
According to Rosbalt observers, a possible merger between the structure of Oleg Novikov and AST will not give anything positive to the Russian market. Over the past 3-4 years, the total circulation of books in Russia has decreased by 20%, while in the premium class - by 25%. In addition, the e-book market in the country is growing annually by 20%, however, this segment is already owned by the companies Liters and Aimobilco, which are somehow controlled by the owners of Eksmo. If a monopolist appears in the country on the book market, one should not expect any steps on its part to reduce the cost of products. This is confirmed by statistics - if in 2008 in Russia the average price of a book was 189 rubles, then in 2011 it was 245 rubles.]
When in April 2012 the Fifth Ocean company, a trading division of AST, began bankruptcy proceedings due to debts exceeding 7.5 billion rubles, it still seemed that the publishing house could survive. “In the past, AST successfully solved problems with the tax service,” notes the director of the Institute of Books, Alexander Gavrilov. “No one has repealed the bankruptcy law: everything that was possible was withdrawn from the enterprise to which the tax authorities made claims—nothing complicated.” But this time, it seems, everything is serious, Denig’s interlocutors believe.
Rospechat learned about the claims of the Federal Tax Service a year ago. Vladimir Grigoriev says that he himself turned to AST when the first unpleasant rumors appeared. They confirmed the information, explaining what was happening as an attack by competitors. In general, it is clear who they had in mind. By the way, six months ago, at a meeting between cultural figures and Vladimir Putin, the only representative from large publishing houses was Eksmo General Director Oleg Novikov.
The merger of companies was discussed as a fait accompli until the state intervened in the situation. Vladimir Grigoriev said that Rospechat fears the concentration of the main bookselling chains in the hands of Eksmo and therefore is negotiating with other possible buyers. And it does this without the participation of AST's main shareholders, who are said to be hiding abroad.
Vladimir Grigoriev told Dengam that in addition to “leading publishing houses,” some “non-book media companies” are participating in the negotiations. According to one of Deneg’s interlocutors, we may be talking about a holding "ProfMedia" . However, all named companies refuse to comment. The Eksmo press service suggests not expecting news “in the near future.”
Rospechat expects to retain publishing houses included in AST, as well as bookstores controlled by the group. This is the Bukva retail chain. [created by the same Helemsky, Gertsev and Igor Feoktistov] and everything that remained under the control of AST after the collapse of the largest network "Top-Kniga". At the same time, what is being prepared is not a sale of more or less net assets (of the same "Letter" or individual publishing houses - "Astreli", "Zakharova" or Corpus) - the terms of the exchange of shares of the entire group for obligations to pay off debts are being discussed. According to Grigoriev, the tax service will probably refuse some of the claims or, at least, agree to establish a grace period for payments.
After the intervention of Rospechat, Eksmo no longer seems to be the most likely contender for AST, says Alexander Gavrilov. According to him, there is only no doubt that the state itself does not lay claim to AST’s business, which has recently been consistently getting rid of book assets. Large publishing houses have already been sold out (Prosveshcheniye and Vysshaya Shkola were the last to leave).
Downside bet
The confrontation with the tax service is a logical result of the AST publishing strategy in recent years, says Alexander Ivanov, head of the Ad Marginem publishing house: over the past five years, the AST group has fought with Eksmo - and lost.
The Russian publishing business has never been particularly profitable, and since 2008 it has been experiencing a crisis, which Ivanov attributes to the loss of casual readers. These are those for whom books helped pass the time on the road or during vacation. Or security guards and watchmen. And these are very important people, notes Alexander Ivanov: 10-15% of Russians have the opportunity to read books about bandits all day long - it is no coincidence that 20 years ago AST and Eksmo started with pulp fiction[...]
“When sales in the regions began to fall, Eksmo and AST rushed towards serious reading,” continues Alexander Ivanov. Eksmo management put on professional and business literature , AST leaders - for fiction. “When it occurred to people from AST to publish high-quality books in addition to waste paper, they did not look for performers on Mars - they simply bought all the best: “Foreigner”, edited by Elena Shubina from "Vagrius" etc.,” says Alexander Gavrilov.
The AST group defeated Eksmo in the battle for bestselling authors, but was unable to maintain its position in the book market. Today, AST dominates large independent stores (such as Biblio-Globus, Moscow or the St. Petersburg House of Books) - on shelves with classics and modern fiction. Bookstores in shopping centers and on the outskirts are littered with books published in the trashy series "Ethnogenesis", "Stalker" and "Metro Universe 2033" - this is also AST, just like Sergey Minaev and science fiction writers Sergei Lukyanenko and Georgy Zotov.
Eksmo, of course, also has stars - Pelevin And Dontsova as a counterweight to Astov's Sorokin and Shilova, but by and large, Eksmo occupies a leading position only in the New Book network, which belongs to the publishing house, as well as in the departments of professional literature.
Ideologist and one of the main shareholders of AST Yakov Helemsky has always been considered rather a negative character. They said about his business that these were “the worst books in the worst translations and in the worst design.” Today AST is a leader in publishing quality literature, but the methods by which the publisher acquired it only worsened its reputation. Having assembled the best team on the market, the AST group declared a price war on its competitors. Authors such as Alexander Ilichevsky, Vladimir Sorokin, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Yulia Shilova and Umberto Eco were purchased from other publishing houses.
“Once you’re in Frankfurt, you’ll be surprised at how expensive Russian publishers are for the rights to even the most basic fiction,” says Alexander Ivanov. “A simple example. For the first Harry Potter in 2000, Rosman paid $10,000 in advance. Last year the AST group bought the rights to Umberto Eco's books for €100 thousand. This is not yet America, but it is already at the level of Italy and close to Germany. At the same time, when you pay that much for everything Eco, there is a chance to recoup this money. But when you spend € "2 million for Lyudmila Ulitskaya is no longer a business. Analysts at Eksmo, which published Ulitskaya before, calculated: the amount will not be recouped even after 30 years of sales."
Fiction has been rapidly losing readers since 2008. It all started with books that are published in circulations of 1-5 thousand and 5-10 thousand copies. This is the overwhelming majority of intellectual prose published in the country. Last year, the crisis hit the mass segment of fiction. In general, during the years of the crisis, publications with a circulation of 5-50 thousand copies, according to Rospechat, lost approximately 30% both in the number of titles published and in circulation. At the same time, professional literature over the same four years increased by almost 30% in the number of published titles and more than 10% in circulation.
In general, the assumption that the reader has a need for entertainment, low or high, has not been confirmed, although the managers of ACT seem to have done everything possible to ensure that this was the case. The publishing house Ad Marginem worked with AST as a distributor for a year: Alexander Ivanov compares a typical AST warehouse to the Luzhniki Stadium, filled to the brim with books.
After AST
Due to the scale of AST's business, even the publishing house's most convinced detractors fear its bankruptcy. “One of the biggest dangers is if these books start to be sold at discount prices,” explains Alexander Ivanov. “All Russian stores will be filled with wildly cheap and often very good books. This will lead to a monstrous crisis in pricing.”
This is one of the reasons why Rospechat takes an active position in this matter. According to Vladimir Grigoriev, the massive sale of the AST heritage will collapse the market and will take several years to recover.
But this is the worst case scenario. What happens if AST merges with Eksmo or gets a new owner devoid of imperial ambitions? Some people think that nothing will change. “The disappearance of AST will not improve the life of publishing houses. It’s like the slogan “Putin, go away!” Helemsky in this sense is a typical Putin,” says Alexander Gavrilov. “Authors’ royalty expectations, state ambitions in the development of the book market, lack of money for the reading public.” public, problems with transporting books across a vast territory - this is what shaped the market in its current form, and not Helemsky at all.” However, the publishers themselves are more optimistic. In fact, their only concern is related to the unification of key book chains under the management of Eksmo.
“For me as a publisher, the plus is that Eksmo is not very interested in unprofitable areas - modern prose and special humanitarian literature,” explains Alexander Ivanov. “It only needs the most profitable territories . You can completely abandon large chains - I’m ready to build my life on the remnants of the independent book trade. True, if Eksmo wins, its pressure on independent networks will increase. Nobody knows where this will lead."
With the disappearance of the AST group in its current form, independent publishers expect a reduction in royalty rates. This is already happening. Western literary agencies are expected to ask for smaller advances at the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair. Publishers expect that the time when Corpus used AST money to buy everything from leading European and American publishers that was in various Top 100s is passing.
Another expectation associated with the collapse of ACT is the development of a legal market for e-books. AST collaborated with the largest platform - LitRes, but without much enthusiasm: LitRes belongs to Eksmo, and AST has its own project in this area - ElKniga. As a result, even a grateful reader who doesn’t mind paying 100-150 rubles for text in epub or fb2 format more often uses the pirate project “Flibusta” or its analogues.
They can be understood, admits liters general director Sergei Anuriev. For example, books Boris Akunin his store has almost everything, but Vladimir Sorokin is represented by only five, and not the most popular. In general, liters has, at best, half of those featured in the main bestseller ratings. Amazon, by comparison, says that of its 100 paper bestsellers, 99 are available on the site in electronic form.
“AST slowed down the process with the desire to build socialism in a single state,” notes Alexander Gavrilov. “If someone doesn’t like liters, I advise you to look at ElKniga - I don’t have a single decent word for this project.”
Sergei Anuriev promises that within a few years the situation will change. A significant portion of books are not presented in the store due to the fact that they do not have electronic rights: two or three years ago, when the market was just emerging, they were simply not indicated in contracts. New contracts most often include the right to distribute books electronically.
In general, only at first glance this whole story looks like it would be if Coca Cola decided to take over Pepsi. It turns out that nothing bad will happen. True, there is another option for the ending. “They say that Helemsky fled the country. But those who know Yakov Mikhailovich understand that he is a real fighter,” warns Alexander Gavrilov. “Not a timid young man, but a man who successfully went through everything terrible and amazing that happened in Russia.” business in the 1990s. Therefore, my experience does not allow me to assume that the tax service told Helemsky “ay-ay-ay!”, and he galloped far, far away.”
editor-in-chief of the publishing house Ad Marginem
Yakov Helemsky is a guild worker from the 1990s in every sense of the word. Imagine an image from a movie: the owner of a small underground factory for the production of T-shirts and plastic bags with the image of Alla Pugacheva - and this is the character who decided to deal with books. Like everyone else, he started with trading: some trays, “Olympic”. (I have such information, but I cannot confirm it in any way.) And now this is the absolute Mister Evil, a dude who, under the guise of books, is trying to install some very strange reality into life. Since he is a sensitive and intelligent person, he realized that the main readers of the trash talk that AST published and publishes are security guards.
We had the following misfortune: for a year we worked with AST as a distributor - according to a complex scheme, from which we still cannot extricate ourselves. Can you imagine Mr. Evil taking out pieces of food from his teeth with his little finger? We were just such a small fiber between Helemsky’s expensive porcelain teeth.
This man is constantly changing the rules of the game. Imagine a taxi driver with whom you agree to go somewhere for 300 rubles, but in the last kilometers he suddenly says, they say, there are a lot of traffic jams, let’s give 500. You tell him, well, well, we agreed, but he : “Come on, bullshit! You really see how hard my life is, they cut me off, the critters, they raised the price of sausage, I have a big family. And if you don’t pay, then I have a crowbar here.” At the same time, this is said by a man in a Brioni suit, Bellucci boots, with vintage leather books in his office.
“Helemsky is now the absolute Mister Evil”
AST created a huge empire. Jacob Helemsky, in particular, is famous for single-handedly nominating bestsellers. The principle is simple: if a book is on the list of one hundred bestsellers, you are covered in chocolate. At the same time, Helemsky sets the prices for books himself. No, he doesn't actually read anything. What a reading! He simply holds each book in his hands, sniffs it, and then says: they say, the wholesale price is 132 rubles.
For me, Helemsky personifies the corporate business that has swallowed up any human movement in the world of books. It must be admitted that he used a method not invented by him in this regard. Even Berezovsky, when he was LogoVAZ, realized that it was necessary to buy not very expensive assets, but several principled managers who would manage these assets. True, there is a side effect: as soon as you move managers from their positions, the business immediately fails. This is how Helemsky bought, for example, a good team of Elena Shubina, who teaches Russian prose at AST, and the team of Varya Gornostaeva. It is gradually destroying the market for small and medium-sized publishers. All books look like more or less identical bagels, which are sprinkled with either azure or pink powder. People have been accustomed to real packaged shit - they have reached the point where they buy books without looking at them.
Sergey Minaev
writer
AST is Yakov Helemsky, who personifies the very word “bookish”. At the same time, he is a worthy person. Thank God, he made money on a Mercedes, but he doesn’t drive a Maybach. At the same time, he is a tough person. I think that if in the early 90s he had chosen not a book profession, but an oil industry profession, he would now be the head of a large oil corporation. At the moment, Helemsky has one competitor - Eksmo. And Oleg Novikov, the owner of Eksmo, is Yashino’s happiness, which he has no idea about. If it weren’t for Novikov, Yasha would have devoured everyone, and it remains to be seen how it would all end.
Helemsky’s approach to business is simple: either I will buy you, or I will bankrupt you. But I'm talking about publishers. As for the authors, I’m sorry, but I don’t know who pays more AST. I actually have the biggest contract - and I was the first to be paid that much.
We met Helemsky very simply. My friend, restaurateur Igor Bukharov, read the manuscript “Dukhless” in the summer of 2005 and directed me to Yakov. Helemsky received me in the office of his partner Andrei Gertsev. I remember this very well, because he began with this phrase: “This is not my office, this is Gertsev’s office.” It was probably clear from the expression on my face that I was slightly surprised. I had already made inquiries about who Yakov was, what he was like, and here was an ultra-modern interior, computers, everything. In short, he began to publish me. And like any aspiring writer, at first I had a very small stake. The contract had already been signed, and in principle, nothing prevented Yasha from continuing to pay me the unfortunate 10 rubles. from a copy, despite the fact that the circulation was 200 thousand. He personally raised my royalty.
“Helemsky’s approach to business is simple: either I’ll buy you, or I’ll bankrupt you.”
Is it easy to get an appointment with Yasha? I think no. Is it easy, tell me, to get an appointment with the owner of YUKOS? Conventionally speaking. However, as far as I know, all the authors of the first thirty come to Helemsky whenever they want. It doesn't happen that he communicates with you through his secretary.
All other publishing houses are kindergarten. Well, what is their pathos? Is it that they are not like everyone else?! Business is business. When some publishers say that books are their main passion in life, this would be good if it were not for the authors who did not leave, say, Ad Marginem for the reason that they were not paid. All these bazaars are about the cultural layer in favor of the poor.
Helemsky bought a lot of people - and they all should thank him. I mean all these little publishing houses that would disappear without him. It's a shame for them to complain. Of course, he harasses the staff: he sits at work until midnight and schedules meetings for ten in the evening. At the same time, he monitors his health - he measures his blood pressure at meetings.
Yakov is a clear winner. He doesn’t work for the Maybach, he works for victory. At the same time, my praises do not mean that Helemsky and I did not have difficult moments in our lives. Approval of each cover, for example. We argued with him until twelve at night: here we need to make these letters, here we need this color, and these pictures are only for Internet users. But if there are no quarrels, then there is no fire. After all, how does this publishing business differ from the trading business? There is very close communication here. So the author comes to you, boring, pretentious, who has already believed in his star, such a goat, and begins to tell you that you are a publisher there, a freak, you don’t understand his great plan, you put pressure on him. And you explain to this asshole that you are on his side and that, generally speaking, he is making money from you. And he tells you again about the flight of his soul - and so on ad infinitum.
Kicking someone who has fallen is an old Russian, and maybe not only Russian, pastime. This is what some people from book publishing have been doing lately in relation to the head and co-owner of the AST publishing house, Yakov Mikhailovich Helemsky. This is how mongrels bark at a wounded lion. The owner of the Ad Marginem publishing house, Alexander Ivanov, was especially successful in this; Lately, as soon as I start reading something about AST, I keep coming across his interview about how AST robbed him and in general what a monster AST was. It is not clear why he went there, because it was not yesterday that he learned about it - about the monster.
Yakov Mikhailovich has been compared with everyone recently - they have even been compared to the point that Mr. Helemsky is the Putin of book publishing. And it was impossible to get an appointment with him, and he did not read the books that he published, and did not pay money, and so on. I read all this, and now I’m tired of it. Without going into an explanation of why the collapse of AST is a disaster for the entire Russian book publishing industry, I want to tell my story of my relationship with Mr. Helemsky and AST. Because, to be honest, I was fed up with the various Ivanovs and their ilk.
In 1998, my husband Igor Zakharov and I published our first book “Ranevskaya. All Life,” written by Alexei Shcheglov, the ersatz grandson of the great actress. This was our first publishing experience. At that time we didn’t understand anything about this at all, we printed the book in a circulation of 25,000 copies (very large even at that time), on very poor paper, the cover is also not a masterpiece in the sense of printing art, it’s faded, only the text is good. We invested our own money there - from the nightstand - $25,000. When I received the book from the printing house, I simply burst into tears. And now I’m sitting with these 25,000 copies. Ranevskaya and I don’t understand what to do. How to sell? And even this one?! Someone I knew advised me that there was a publishing house called AST (I didn’t know anything about anyone at that time), they say, go there, make an offer, they publish and sell, maybe it will work out. I found a phone number, called, and said that I wanted to go straight to the main one - Mr. Helemsky. I was given a day and time. And so I came. I didn’t wait, they accepted me right away. In the room, in addition to Yakov Mikhailovich, there was also commercial director Alexander Ivanov, the namesake of Ad-Marginema. I introduced myself, honestly said that I had never been involved in book publishing before, this was our first experience (I kept the book in my bag, I was afraid to show it), the book was very interesting, but the printing house let me down as an amateur, and this is what happened. With these words, I took out the ill-fated book. Yakov Mikhailovich took it in his hands. “And who are you?” - he asked sympathetically and with genuine interest. “Yes, it’s my own fault, I didn’t even know what boom vinyl was,” I answered. “Yes, it’s bad, just really bad,” he said. - Is it the same inside? - “No, very interesting, for the first time about Ranevskaya, her ersatz grandson wrote, believe me.” - “I don’t believe it, I’ll read it. How much do you want for it? I named the price. She seemed tall, even very tall, especially to Alexander Ivanov. He started to bargain. I didn't give up. In the end, we agreed in a way that suited everyone. But they still asked me to leave a copy to read and call in a few days. I called. The answer was: “Bring your 25,000!” I brought it. And three weeks later the phone rang: “Everything has been sold, finish printing!”
This is how my collaboration with AST began, in which I did not communicate with anyone except Yakov Helemsky - Yan, and Alexander Ivanov. I published books, they sold, sometimes, to make it easier to sell, we put “Zakharov - AST” on our books. (Which, apparently, was the reason that a month ago the Kommersant-Dengi magazine, in an article devoted to the fate of AST, called us one of AST’s assets. I wonder if all their information is as accurate?) I had nothing to do with it complain: I always regularly received money for what I sold, sometimes I went to see Ian, we just chatted about this and that, sometimes not about books at all. And this went on for three years. Then I decided that there was no point in sharing money, I had to sell it myself, as I wanted. You have to create your own distribution network, you have to rely only on yourself. And I came to Yakov Mikhailovich. “I don’t want to depend on you anymore, I’m leaving.” - “What, what’s wrong?” - “Everything is fine, I just want everything myself.” - “You can’t, you can’t imagine, How This". - “I decided, but I can’t, then I’ll come again.” - “You will come in the wrong capacity, do you understand that?” - "Understand…"
I understood what Yakov Mikhailovich was talking about: coming as a partner or a petitioner are two big differences. I left and knew then that I would never return. But I left with an immensely good feeling: I learned everything that I didn’t know and that was so necessary in this business, and my teacher, without knowing it, was Yakov Helemsky. I left “all in chocolate” for free and unknown swimming. And he did not hold me back, did not offer me millions (although even then there were many bestsellers in my portfolio, including books by Boris Akunin), because he understood that complete freedom was much more important to me then than money. He paid me everything that AST owed me for distributing my books and wished me good luck. And I left. And for some time I didn’t think about AST at all, except that their distribution structures continued to take our books and pay regularly. But this was no longer done by me personally, but by the distribution department that I created. In Moscow they joked then that I was the only case when it was not me, but I, who deceived AST. But this statement was incorrect: I did not deceive anyone, because I did not promise anything. And Ian knew this.
Many years later, in the spring of 2012, about a month before the news came that Eksmo was absorbing AST, Ian and I were sitting in his office, the same as many years ago. Before that, he called me and asked me to come to discuss a project. We had not seen each other for eight years before this. His partner Yuri Deikalo was also there. I walked in, Ian kissed me, as if these many years had never happened (we had met occasionally before, but very briefly and in front of a large crowd of people). We talked about the project - briefly, and then about everything. “And I remember how you came to me for the first time - in such a red dress,” said Yang. I was surprised, because even I didn’t remember this. “You haven’t changed at all, always, Yura, she’s always wearing dark glasses. Her daughter accidentally damaged her eye.” He remembered. After all, this happened exactly when I was collaborating with AST. We sat for three hours. They were just reminiscing, talking about the situation on the book market, and so on. Nothing foreshadowed anything... “I want to ask you: give me a normal discount on your books, we work with you almost without a discount,” said Yang. - “Which one?” He named. I immediately agreed. Yura was surprised: “If I had asked for more, she would have given it!” - “No, I wouldn’t give it, I named exactly the one she agreed to. I know her". Yura looked at me questioningly. “Yes, that’s right, he knows me,” I said. “He actually taught me a lot.”
Several years before this, our last meeting to date, Jan “stole” my author Vladimir Sorokin from me (by the way, I did the same thing a few years earlier, luring Mr. Sorokin from “Ad Marginema”). He simply offered him more money, and he did not resist the temptation. It’s hard to blame anyone who doesn’t happen to him; few wouldn’t succumb. It’s just a pity that another one of... But this is my personal “sorry.” I remember that at first, when I found out about this, and surprisingly, not from Vladimir, but from completely different people, I was furious, but not at Ian, but at Vladimir. Why should I be angry with Ian? He just suggested, and there is a personal matter for everyone, freedom of choice. I also know those who refused...
I also wanted to write something to Alexander Ivanov, “Ad Marginem,” but I became too lazy. I just want to advise him for the future: don’t shout at all corners that you are owed, at the same time you look like a person with whom can it be like this and this is useful information for your distributors.
Irina Bogat, director andZakharov publishing house
01/11/2013, The case of IP addresses and the Chinese printer
Ephemeral companies, garbage dumps, gaskets, dummies, astronauts, technical companies - unfortunately, in the 2000s, these dissonant terms became firmly established in the slang of tax specialists. The use of such companies in business activities has become the most “effective” way of tax evasion, and arbitration cases involving such episodes, according to my estimates, account for at least half of all tax disputes. Today we are talking about one of these cases, or rather about a group of them.
At the beginning of 2012, the media reported that tax authorities had filed tax claims against one of the largest Russian publishing groups - AST. The company was accused of non-payment of income taxes and VAT in the amount of 6.7 billion rubles. through the use of shell companies in their activities. Here's what Vedomosti wrote about it at one time.
During 2012, several judicial decisions were issued in these cases, from which one can glean how the AST publishing house organized a tax evasion scheme and how the tax authorities exposed it, proving their claims in court. For example, one, two, three.
The scheme looked simple. The wholesaler is a group company that purchased book products and stationery from actual manufacturers, “resold” it with a minimal margin to fly-by-night companies, and they, increasing the cost of the goods by 40-50%, “supplied” it further to the group companies (let’s call them retail) for sales to end consumers through retail chains and stores. Accordingly, the margin of one-day companies was excluded from taxation.
Tax officials, proving the scheme, identified a typical set of its components: refusenik directors, zero reporting of fly-by-night companies or with minimal indicators, absence of a legal address, lack of personnel and means of production, transport, and storage facilities. In general, nothing new, so to speak, a “classic of the genre”.
For my part, I would like to note two interesting facts that helped convince the court of the coordinated actions of the group companies for the purpose of tax evasion.
The first is technical, sometimes found in judicial practice in a similar category of cases: the management of the Client-Bank for working with current accounts of fly-by-night companies, wholesale and retail companies was carried out from the same IP addresses, which, according to the court, indicates control fly-by-night stories for real group companies. The process of proving and justifying this fact can be viewed in detail on pages 20–25 of this decision and pages 24–26 of this one.
And the second one can probably be called funny. The court found that “the tax authority also revealed an affiliation between 1st-level technical companies (fly-by-night companies), namely, when analyzing the registration files of 1st-level technical companies, it was established that in the authorized capital of Azimut LLC, Miodest LLC, LLC "Miresal", LLC "Russian Book Center" was introduced HPLaser Jet 1015 printer, made in China with a single serial number - SCN61MO30C" (third paragraph from the bottom of page 25 of the same decision).
Both laughter and sin.
P.S. According to the rules of the blog, I refer only to established facts and conclusions made by the courts, and do not give my assessments until the cassation ruling. Original of this material
© "Vedomosti", 12.12.2012
Tax officers finish reading books
Ksenia Boletskaya, Dmitry KazminThe Moscow Arbitration Court recently rejected the claim of Fifth Ocean LLC against Tax Inspectorate No. 17 in Moscow, as follows from the court’s database. "Fifth Ocean" - the former logistics structure of the AST group - disputed the additional assessment of taxes. In 2010-2011 The tax inspectorate checked this company, as well as four other legal entities included in the AST, and presented them with claims for a total amount of 6.7 billion rubles. The amount of claims against Fifth Ocean was the largest - 4.16 billion rubles. Tax officials considered that AST uses fly-by-night companies when selling books and stationery: some companies of the group (manufacturers) sell them goods at a minimum markup, while others (distributors) then buy them at a maximum. The difference remains in one-day money and is removed from taxation. The group's revenue last year amounted to 6.5 billion rubles, so additional charges exceed the annual turnover of AST.
Until the spring of this year, AST was one of the two largest book companies in Russia. According to SPARK and the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the owner of most of the companies of the AST group (there are more than a hundred of them in total) is the Cypriot A.A.B.P. Advanced Achievement Books Publishers Ltd. Its owners, in turn, are Andrey Gertsev and Yakov Helemsky (33.35% each), Oleg Bartenev and Igor Feoktistov (9.52% each), Yuri Khatskevich (9.51%), Yuri Deikalo (4.75% ). Since June, all AST business, except for the Bukva retail chain, has been managed by the top management of the group’s former main competitor - the company "Eksmo". The company received a three-year option to purchase the main companies of AST, co-owner of Eksmo Oleg Novikov said earlier.
All five companies challenged the results of the tax audit in court and have already lost most of the cases. They still have the opportunity to appeal. But companies do not have enough funds to pay if decisions on additional assessments come into force, says a tax official familiar with the situation. For example, from the court decision on the “Fifth Ocean” it follows that the company has assets worth 6.3 billion rubles, and its accounts payable (including additional taxes) amount to almost 12 billion rubles. And four of the five companies against which claims were made (except for Astrel LLC) were declared bankrupt based on their own statements, and they are undergoing liquidation proceedings, it follows from the court’s database.
In addition, AST now actually has a different owner, a tax official points out, so the inspectorate is studying the possibility of bringing “members of a group of persons” (top managers and, possibly, former owners) to subsidiary liability.
Vicarious liability actually means that the general director, chief accountant and other managers compensate for damage not only with company property, but also with personal property, explains Roman Terekhin, managing partner of the Nalogovik law firm. Such liability, he said, is applied extremely rarely: it is difficult not only to prove, but also to then recover the citizen’s personal funds. The practical benefit of such a measure is not the return of money, but the personal responsibility of top managers - as an edification to other managers that tax evasion can result in serious personal troubles, Terekhin added. […]
Yakov Helemsky: absolute Mister Evil
Original of this material© "Afisha", 04/01/2011, Who rules Moscow / Yakov Helemsky, head of the AST publishing house, Photo: ITAR-TASS
Natalia Kostrova
Most of the gigantic Russian book market is controlled by the AST publishing house - and the AST publishing house is controlled by Yakov Helemsky: a man who does not give interviews and who, according to rumors, single-handedly assigns bestsellers and buys up small publishing houses on the vine. [...]
Alexander Ivanov
editor-in-chief of the publishing house Ad Marginem
Yakov Helemsky is a guild worker from the 1990s in every sense of the word. Imagine an image from a movie: the owner of a small underground factory for the production of T-shirts and plastic bags with the image of Alla Pugacheva - and this is the character who decided to deal with books. Like everyone else, he started with trading: some trays, “Olympic”. (I have such information, but I cannot confirm it in any way.) And now this is the absolute Mister Evil, a dude who, under the guise of books, is trying to install some very strange reality into life. Since he is a sensitive and intelligent person, he realized that the main readers of the trash talk that AST published and publishes are security guards.
We had the following misfortune: for a year we worked with AST as a distributor - according to a complex scheme, from which we still cannot extricate ourselves. Can you imagine Mister Evil taking pieces of food out of his teeth with his little finger? We were just such a small fiber between Helemsky’s expensive porcelain teeth.
This man is constantly changing the rules of the game. Imagine a taxi driver with whom you agree to go somewhere for 300 rubles, but in the last kilometers he suddenly says, they say, there are a lot of traffic jams, let’s give 500. You tell him, well, well, we agreed, but he : “Come on, bullshit! You really see how hard my life is, they cut me off, the critters, they raised the price of sausage, I have a big family. And if you don’t pay, then I have a crowbar here.” At the same time, this is said by a man in a Brioni suit, Bellucci boots, with vintage leather books in his office.
AST created a huge empire. Jacob Helemsky, in particular, is famous for single-handedly nominating bestsellers. The principle is simple: if a book is on the list of one hundred bestsellers, you are covered in chocolate. At the same time, Helemsky sets the prices for books himself. No, he doesn't actually read anything. What a reading! He simply holds each book in his hands, sniffs it, and then says: they say, the wholesale price is 132 rubles.
For me, Helemsky personifies the corporate business that has swallowed up any human movement in the world of books. It must be admitted that he used a method not invented by him in this regard. Even Berezovsky, when he was LogoVAZ, realized that it was necessary to buy not very expensive assets, but several principled managers who would manage these assets. True, there is a side effect: as soon as you move managers from their positions, the business immediately fails. This is how Helemsky bought, for example, a good team of Elena Shubina, who teaches Russian prose at AST, and the team of Varya Gornostaeva. It is gradually destroying the market for small and medium-sized publishers. All books look like more or less identical bagels, which are sprinkled with either azure or pink powder. People have been accustomed to real packaged shit - they have reached the point where they buy books without looking at them. [...]
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