Ogiz was the Association of the State Book and Magazine Publishers. Its main offices were located in Moscow and in Leningrad. The Sovnarkom of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic established Ogiz in 1930 to centralize publishing activities under a state monopoly. In 1931, certain publications were separated from Ogiz. This principally affected technical manuals and propaganda material issued by the publisher. For example, posters, art magazines and artistic books were placed under Izogiz (Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo), the fine arts section of Ogiz. Iskusstvo was the Art Publishing House (A.K.A. Visual Arts Publishing) that was created in 1936 out of the prior merger of Ogiz-Izogiz.