"News"
On the 10th anniversary, the “donkey” turned out to be a “donkey”
- This actually seems like a “donkey”!.. By the way, there is also a market philosophy here. For example, our great scribe Yakov Mikhailovich Helemsky is building such a “bull” at the AST publishing house - covering all market niches. But “AST” is 20 “Vagrius”, 30 “Vagrius” - that is, the scale is incommensurable.
link: http://exlibris.ng.ru/izdat/ 2002-04-11/1_uspenskiy.html
AST leadership fled abroad
Having brought the book business of the largest publishing house AST to a dead end thanks to the use of shell companies, shareholder-managers Yakov Helemsky and Alexander Deikalo chose to hide abroad. It is difficult to estimate the value of AST due to the opacity of the group’s business. In March 2012, it became known that tax claims against AST related to the use of shell companies exceeded 6 billion rubles. (about $194 million at the Central Bank exchange rate as of yesterday). One of the main trading divisions of AST, Fifth Ocean LLC, filed for bankruptcy, which was granted on May 17 by the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region.
link: http://www.stringer.ru/ publication.mhtml?Part=48& PubID=20938
Eksmo is negotiating the purchase of AST, - kommersant.ru
On the Eksmo side, co-owner and general director of the publishing house Oleg Novikov is participating in the negotiations, and on the AST side, one of the main owners of the group, Andrey Gertsev, Kommersant’s interlocutors say. Two more major shareholders of AST - Yakov Helemsky and Yuri Deikalo, after presenting tax claims to the group, left abroad, market participants heard.
link: http://www.mediabusiness.com. ua/index2.php?
Yaroslavl "House of Books" was bought by AST top manager Yakov Helemsky
Today, September 23, the House of Books was bought as a private individual by a resident of Moscow, the chief manager of the AST publishing group, Yakov Helemsky, for 82 million rubles. He promised the municipal deputies that he was not going to change the specialization of the store. So, soon this store may be called not “House of Books”, but “Letter”. After all, all the bookstores of this publishing group have exactly this name. In terms of prices, it will not differ much from the “House of Books” beloved by Yaroslavl residents. By the way, this publishing house has one store each in Yaroslavl and Rybinsk.
link: http://yar.kp.ru/online/news/ 545981
Merger of book giants: Eksmo and AST agree to merge
According to SPARK and the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the main owner of the AST group is the Cypriot A.A.B.P. Advanced Achievement Books Publishers Ltd. This company belongs to Yakov Helemsky, who is called on the market the main shareholder of AST, and several other individuals. Officially ours financial indicators AST does not disclose.
link: http://m.forbes.ru/article. php?id=82294
Club AST in ASKI
LAST week the press club of the AST publishing house opened. The first meeting was held in the mansion of the Association of Book Publishers of Russia (ASKI) on Bolshaya Nikitskaya. About publishing a dozen journalists were told by the chairman of the board of directors of the AST group of companies, Yakov Helemsky, the financial director of AST and the general director of the Astrel publishing house, Oleg Bartenev, the novelist Polina Dashkova and children's writer Grigory Oster.
link: http://exlibris.ng.ru/fakty/ 2001-10-25/7_klub.html
The St. Petersburg chain “House of Books” is looking for investors
The head of the AST group, Yakov Helemsky, confirmed that he is interested in acquiring the retailer and is participating in negotiations. The network’s debt to AST, according to him, is about 20 million rubles. The director of the Bukvoed network, Denis Kotov, claims that he knows how to solve the problem of the House of Books, but negotiations with him have not yet begun.
link: http://www.interbookforum.com/news/2261.aspx
Difficulties of transition
Another, Yakov Helemsky, who today is the general director of AST, worked as an engineer at a research institute, collected books, but one day he realized that it was useless to stand in line at night at a bookstore in the hope of buying one in the morning new book, which was delivered the night before - in the morning it turned out that the books had already run out. Helemsky decided that it would be easier to go to work in a bookstore as a salesman, which is what he eventually did. This is how he managed to collect a library, and then this hobby turned into a business.
link: http://www.kadrovik.ru/modules.php?
Awarded "Manuscript of the Year"
The ceremony was attended by special guests: the head of the AST publishing group Yakov Mikhailovich Helemsky, the director of the St. Petersburg House of Books Lyubov Georgievna Paskhina, the Grand Prix winner of the first season of the Manuscript of the Year award Elya Khakimova, writer and screenwriter Andrei Kivinov, illustrator Katya Matyushkina, Deputy Director of the State Museum "St. Isaac's Cathedral" Irada Vovnenko.
link:
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 economic activity has become the most “effective” way to evade taxes, 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. This is what Vedomosti wrote about this 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 will note 2 interesting facts, which helped convince the court of the concerted 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: management of the Client-Bank for working with current accounts of shell companies, wholesale and retail companies were carried out from the same IP addresses, which, according to the court, indicates the control of the fly-by-night companies to the real companies of the group. 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
Chief Editor published by 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 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 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. [...]
“Every fifth book in Russia!” The AST publishing house used this proud slogan for a long time, and its position seemed unshakable. AST had the rights to publish novels and stories by Stephen King, Dan Brown, Paulo Coelho, John Fowles, the Strugatsky brothers, Vladimir Sorokin, Mikhail Weller, Polina Dashkova. But last year, the publishing portfolio and the majority of AST employees came under the wing of a competitor, Eksmo. The price of the transaction was not disclosed, but the general director of one of the Moscow publishing houses suggests that it did not exceed $5 million. This despite the fact that in better times, AST’s revenue was estimated at $250 million. What ruined the market leader?
Eksmo General Director Oleg Novikov offers an explanation: “AST sought to increase sales by increasing output. The editor didn’t keep track of what happened next with the book.” Nevertheless, for more than fifteen years this strategy was successful. The publishing house, which in the early 1990s was part of Telman Ismailov’s AST group of companies and inherited the name from it, by the mid-2000s had become a threat to the book market. AST retained key authors with substantial advances and could start a fee war, luring away from competitors both writers of pop detective stories (for example, Yulia Shilova - No. 3 in circulation in 2007) and masters of intellectual prose (Zakhara Prilepin, Lyudmila Ulitskaya). Legends were made about the commercial flair of the founder of AST, Yakov Helemsky. He kept all the titles and editions in his mind.
When new items were brought into Helemsky’s office, he felt each book and immediately set a selling price.
“We used to meet for tea, and he kept calculating and writing something,” recalls Boris Yesenkin, general director of the Biblio-Globus Trading House.
The AST publishing group had a phenomenal complex structure. Yakov Helemsky and his partner Andrey Gertsev over all the years of AST’s existence, according to SPARK, have established over 70 legal entities that are in one way or another involved in the book business. Moreover, the parent LLC “AST Publishing House” was registered in the Dagestan village of Novokayakent, then changed its registration to the capital of Tuva, Kyzyl, then “moved” to Shchelkovo near Moscow. Three companies with different addresses could be listed as publishers of the same book. It is not surprising that in 2005, employees of the Department of Economic Security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs raided the Moscow office of AST on Zvezdny Boulevard. In addition to charges of tax evasion amounting to $100 million, a criminal case was opened for false entrepreneurship.
“Helemsky told me that a “mask show” was held at AST,” says Vladimir Grigoriev, deputy head Federal agency for Press and Media, overseeing the book industry. - It turned out that the company, in addition to using registration in offshore jurisdictions, uses the services of shell companies. After this problem was resolved, our communication regarding the reorganization began. I tried to convince them that the business model needed to be changed, I offered to sell a stake to an investor who would help carry out a corporate cleanup. The use of “garbage dumps” in business could lead both to the collapse of the company and to a negative perception of publishers by tax authorities.”
Two years earlier, the Federal Service for Economic and Tax Crimes brought charges against Eksmo for using shell companies (Novikov himself says that he never had any conflicts with tax authorities). The case did not go to court, but the founder of Eksmo, apparently, made conclusions. First, the group's structure and operations should not compromise the business. A few years later, tax officials checked Eksmo, but, Novikov assures, “they did not find any significant violations.” Secondly, having studied the experience of the world's largest publishing houses, Novikov and his partner Andrey Gredasov rebuilt their business.
Eksmo was divided into autonomous divisions, between which the functions of publishing fiction, children's, leisure and applied literature were distributed. Each division received the freedom to choose an editorial policy, and the editors were obliged to analyze the sales of published books in order to adjust the nomenclature and circulation if necessary. “This gave Eksmo certain stiffening ribs and reduced the dependence of the company’s fate on the personality of the owners,” says Alexander Gavrilov, director of the Institute of Books and co-owner of Dodo bookstores.
The owners of AST, on the contrary, did not intend to delegate powers. However, they divided the roles among themselves. “Yakov Helemsky is a man of the book, he subtly feels and understands it, and almost unmistakably senses its potential. Andrey Gertsev, according to my information, was mainly responsible for GR, and boasted that he had patron generals,” says Vladimir Grigoriev (it was not possible to obtain comments from the former co-owners of AST: Helemsky emigrated to Israel, Gertsev responded to Forbes’ requests for an interview did not answer). A source on the book market claims that Gertsev was deeply confident that if they came to AST again with checks, the partners would be able to pay off.
Without tax optimization, Helemsky's group would seem to have difficulty maintaining its aggressiveness in the market. In addition to the fee wars, AST baited booksellers by providing deferred payments for up to a year, and for the largest distributor Top Book - up to two years. “You order books, the delivery arrives, and it’s more than what you ordered. You call AST: what is it? They answer: put it on the shelf, or return it later, or sell it,” Alexander Gavrilov describes the publishing house’s policy.
In 2008, Oleg Novikov first suggested that competitors think about an alliance that would allow publishers to optimize costs. However, things did not go further than talk. Yakov Helemsky felt like he was on a horse. When editor-in-chief Varvara Gornostaeva and general director Sergei Parkhomenko left Inostranka, bought by Alexander Mamut, he immediately invited them to create a new publishing house. This is how Corpus appeared in the structure of the AST group, which immediately became a bestseller (“Interlinear” by Lungina).
But in 2009, Top Book, which was one of the main trading partners of AST, began to collapse. Novikov suggested to AST that they create a joint venture with the participation of Top Book to save it. However, Helemsky and Gertsev again preferred independence. Top Books' debt to AST amounted to 850 million rubles, while the publishing group provided the distributor with a loan of 400 million rubles at 16% per annum.
Money did not save the wholesaler from collapse. And they didn’t return to AST. In 2010, Top Book began bankruptcy proceedings. Already in the same year, Eksmo left AST behind, selling books worth 6.7 billion rubles against 5.7 billion rubles from its competitor. New ones have been added to the financial problems of the AST - tax audits. Several companies of the group were exposed to claims in excess of 6 billion rubles (including fines and penalties). AST representatives challenged the tax requirements in court. Vladimir Grigoriev tried to help the largest book publishing group this time: “I gathered them [the owners of AST] and offered to act as an intermediary in communication with the tax authorities in order to conclude a pre-trial agreement on the payment of debt and, possibly, get a tax holiday. But he set a condition: they will honestly show the volume of production and sales volume. He warned that if they start turning to lobby lawyers, this is unlikely to lead to a positive result.”
His proposal did not evoke enthusiasm. AST owners considered the multibillion-dollar claims a “misunderstanding.” However, things only got worse. In March 2012, the police searched the office of the trading LLC Polimix-Center, part of the AST publishing group, on suspicion of tax evasion by a group of persons by prior conspiracy. The treasury, according to tax officials, lost 1.5 billion rubles. Immediately after this incident, Helemsky moved to Israel. Andrey Gertsev remained in Russia to deal with the problems.
A certain publisher, who wished to remain anonymous, believes that one of the reasons for the collapse of AST is an unfortunate coincidence: the last “mask show” on Zvezdny Boulevard happened during the shift change between the Medvedev and Putin governments, and none of the patrons of AST wanted to resolve the conflict.
The companies of the AST publishing group lost tax disputes one after another. According to Vladimir Grigoriev, Gertsev tried to find support from a number of big businessmen. Oleg Novikov clarifies: AST shareholders were in contact with company A1 from Alfa Group. “When it finally became clear that they [AST’s founders] had chosen an illiterate strategy, I began consultations with the publishing community in order to save AST as publishing structure"- says Grigoriev. In particular, he communicated with the owner of the Azbuka-Atticus group, Alexander Mamut, and the president of ProfMedia, Rafael Akopov. The only one who agreed was Oleg Novikov.
The general director of Eksmo agreed with Helemsky and Gertsev that if the reorganization of AST succeeds, he will pay them a certain amount (the transaction price is not disclosed). “I didn’t understand the situation deeply, there was no management reporting, it was unclear where the real assets were, where the liabilities were, who owned the goods, rights, shares. Everything was confusing,” explains Novikov. - It was decided not to try to save the old system, but to create new companies. As far as I know, some of the old companies are now in bankruptcy.”
In the fall of 2013, Novikov re-registered AST Publishing House LLC, becoming its full owner. He calls the transaction valuation of $5 million far from reality. Novikov also kept Astrel LLC, tax claims against which (only a few million rubles) were paid off by the previous owners. The new AST undertook to renegotiate contracts with writers, copyright holders and editors. Novikov personally convinced many that the business would not be sold again. As a result, all the key authors remained with AST, only the copyright holders for the publication of Astrid Lindgren’s books went to ABC-Atticus.
“Novikov saved the structure from financial collapse,” says Oleg Bartenev, a former minority shareholder of AST, who retired long before the sale of the publishing house. - When the owners abandoned everything here, collapse could have occurred. Then Novikov took AST under his control and invested very significantly - it was necessary to pay salaries to a large number of employees.” 90% of the previous employees - about 500 people - joined the staff of the new AST Publishing House LLC.
The current AST structure is similar to Eksmo. AST consists of independent editorial imprints with their own publishing strategies aimed at specific reader groups. For example, Corpus specializes in modern foreign prose, Prime-Eurosign specializes in esoteric and psychological literature, and Elena Shubina’s Editorial Team works with young Russian authors.
Oleg Novikov does not hide the fact that it is very difficult to establish relationships with wholesalers and retailers; managing a sharply increased assortment causes great difficulties - about 45,000 items, a third of which are low-liquid. Up to 15% of the circulation of books from the former AST were shipped to the Bukva retail chain, created by the former owners of the publishing house. But Bukva now has three times fewer stores. There was a temptation to combine part of the business processes of Eksmo and AST, but Novikov decided not to do this. Eksmo sells its books through its own distribution centers, AST mainly through independent wholesalers. Eksmo’s distribution costs are therefore 5% higher than AST’s, but its own centers work more closely with regional retail. As a result, for a number of comparable items, Eksmo’s sales are 10–15% higher than AST.
Publishers continue to compete for authors. For example, the writer Galina Kulikova is currently negotiating simultaneously with Eksmo and AST. Companies participate in the same international publishing tenders. Novikov does not plan to integrate Eksmo and AST as long as the structures are able to develop independently. Eksmo's revenue in 2013 amounted to 6.5 billion rubles, AST - 4.5 billion rubles.
The Russian Book Chamber (RCC) has not yet summed up its industry results for the past year. But in 2012, Eksmo and AST accounted for more than 19% of printed books produced in the country (including textbooks, brochures, etc.).
The status of the largest book publisher Oleg Novikov does not seem to please him too much - he looks tired.
“The work is interesting, but it’s difficult to operationally manage two such large companies,” the businessman admits. - As a result, I manage to devote less time to Eksmo than I would like. “I would like to create a holding company, appoint general directors and step away from operational management.”
When will this be possible? Novikov does not undertake to make predictions. Market paper books in Russia is gradually shrinking (the average book circulation, according to RCP estimates, in the first half of 2013 was almost 11% less than in the same period in 2011). Not best time to retire, especially when you have invested in expanding your business.
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 have ended.
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 publishers 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 himself 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 we did not have difficult moments in life. 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.
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 said here figuratively 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 Catherine. 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 poignant 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 Vladimir Vladimirovich’s later confession: “We fought with Yesenin often, blaming him mainly for the imagism that had grown around him.” 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 of it where it is explained why two words in the first stanza were changed, because this replacement indicates a high spiritual sensitivity, seemingly unexpected for Mayakovsky, who was 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, 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 personal life luminaries of verse continued into further 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 Yuri Annenkov’s informative, also very late, book “Diary of My Meetings” with the significant subtitle “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 understood, 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 the manner of writing 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 SSES?
- 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 literary, but also in general history our super-turbulent modernity.
