Softcover, 140×200 mm, 624 pages, 1000 copies
Gluschenkoizdat, 2016
Glushchenkoizdat have come into possession of Nikolai Kozakov’s notebooks for the year 1962. Following extensive work on their transcription and preparation for print, the publishers present the present volume for the edification of readers, in conjunction with a radio drama. The publication has been timed to coincide with the publishers’ summary exhibition “Our days are rich and bright”.
The publishers hope that, after having lain many long years in a private archive with little chance of publication during the period of state control over literary production, these journals will finally be able to find their deserved readership today. Reading this literary and historical document should contribute towards a better understanding of those bygone “days” themselves, as well as act as a fitting antidote to that nostalgia-prone perception of the past fostered by the family albums and postcards that have been passed down to us, with all their smiling factory workers and imposing views of empty thoroughfares taken in the early hours of the morning.
One of the original Kozakov's diaries. I worked with 13 textbooks covering year 1962.
The site includes nine episodes of the podcast, with the roundtable, where we discuss the diaries, a lot of Nikolay Kozakov's photographs, articles about the diaries by Maria Kuvshinova and Arseniy Khitrov. We're also publishing English translation of the diaries by Ben MacGarr and recent photographs from Kadnitsy, Zaprudnoe, and Kstovo, taken by Kirill Gluschenko in 2016.
The site is built on the platform verstka.io.
Design interns: Alexander Moskovskiy and Nastya Glushkova.
Design interns: Alexander Moskovskiy and Nastya Glushkova.
Evacuated from besieged wartime Leningrad, ten-year-old Nikolai Kozakov finds himself in the village of Tolba, near Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod). His mother, a former teacher, finds work as an accountant in the local children’s home, while Nikolai goes to school, later enrolling on a distance learning course with Moscow State University’s history faculty. The Kozakovs then move to the neighboring village of Kadnitsy. Nikolai gets a job driving a lorry and briefly goes off to work on building the Chelkar oil pipeline in Kazakhstan, though he soon returns home.
Kozakov keeps a methodical record of his life. Starting at fifteen years of age, he writes his diary: detailed notes penned in 96-page standard exercise books, each entry beginning with air temperature and wind direction, describing occurrences at work and at home, and switching back and forth between musings on love and his place in society. Separate accounts detail the weather and “Accounts of expenditures and libations to Bacchus”, in which daily expenses and capacities of alcohol imbibed are given alongside the places and circumstances surrounding the drinking sessions concerned. Kozakov writes poetry, later to be published in local small newspapers. When he gets hold of a camera, Kozakov takes pictures, not only of the customary social events and portraits but also of landscapes, “architectural compositions”, and even a series of “Signs of animal activity”: “Bear tracks with a size 45 boot, 25/7/71”, “Trees gnawed by beavers (old), river Lamna, 26/8/71”. In the mid-sixties, Kozakov breaks off his customary diary and begins a new series of exercise books: Diaries of Hunting and Fishing.
Kozakov keeps a methodical record of his life. Starting at fifteen years of age, he writes his diary: detailed notes penned in 96-page standard exercise books, each entry beginning with air temperature and wind direction, describing occurrences at work and at home, and switching back and forth between musings on love and his place in society. Separate accounts detail the weather and “Accounts of expenditures and libations to Bacchus”, in which daily expenses and capacities of alcohol imbibed are given alongside the places and circumstances surrounding the drinking sessions concerned. Kozakov writes poetry, later to be published in local small newspapers. When he gets hold of a camera, Kozakov takes pictures, not only of the customary social events and portraits but also of landscapes, “architectural compositions”, and even a series of “Signs of animal activity”: “Bear tracks with a size 45 boot, 25/7/71”, “Trees gnawed by beavers (old), river Lamna, 26/8/71”. In the mid-sixties, Kozakov breaks off his customary diary and begins a new series of exercise books: Diaries of Hunting and Fishing.
N. Kozakov. Benign Duplicates
Photo from the archive of Nikolay Kozakov. 100 postcards, 144×114 mm, edition of 10.
Gluschenkoizdat, 2016
When the book was almost finished, I went on an assignment to Kadnitsy — the village where Nikolay Kozakov lived in 1962. My plan was to photograph Kadnitsy and meet with Kozakov's widow Nina Ivanovna. It was there where I've discovered a huge archive of Nikolay's photos from the 1950s to 1980s, with several reels of film.
Radio drama “1962. Nikolay Kozakov. Diaries”
Vinyl 2×LP, 8 pages insert, 300 copies
Gluschenkoizdat, 2016
In 2017 we've launched a digital edition of the radio drama in a form of 9-episodes podcast with a website 1962.gluschenkoizdat.ru. Each week we've published a new episode
The podcast was 3rd in the Top 10 Podcasts in Arts/Literature in iTunes Russia.
