What do Luke Harding, Edward Lucas, and Henry Kissinger have in common? They’ve all ‘accidentally’ written books for a Russian nationalist publisher.

In February 2015, the Algorithm publishing house launched a book by Guardian journalist Luke Harding called “No One But Putin.” In August, it emerged that the British author had, in reality, nothing to do with the book. Algorithm’s “Putin Project” series already encompasses 24 books, and Harding’s “contribution” is far from the only one with such a dubious pedigree. On assignment for Meduza, literary critic Galina Yuzefovich tries to figure out what’s going on with Algorithm and its “authors.” 

The publishing house Algorithm first came to the attention of international media on August 8, after the Guardian’s Luke Harding made an unusual announcement. The British journalist claimed that he had no relation to the book “No One But Putin: Why the Russian ‘System’ Recognizes Him,” which had recently been released under his name. It soon became apparent that many other works published by Algorithm (including texts by American journalist Michael Bohm, Edward Lucas, Senior Editor at The Economist, and former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger) were also released without their authors’ agreement. In essence, the texts were unauthorized compilations from various sources, sloppily translated with seemingly-arbitrary abridgements, additions, and repetitions.

Algorithm hasn’t just limited itself to foreign authors (who, one assumes, never knew about the publication of “their” books in Russia). Sergei Dorenko, a well known Russian journalist, had a book published under his name called “Donbas: Putin’s Smoke Screen.” He claims never to have written it and most likely only discovered its existence on August 11, when it appeared on a list of books banned in Ukraine. Stanislav Belkovsky, a noted Russian PR-guru, also had a book published without his consent, “The Black Mark of the Opposition.” The texts included in this book were reproduced without alteration, but the author was made aware of the book’s existence only post-factum. He has since sued the publisher.

In 2012, Algorithm published the book “Pussy Riot: What Was It,” which listed among its authors Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who was sentenced to two years imprisonment for her part in the group’s “Punk Prayer” performance in 2012. The book’s publication was shrouded in mystery. At first, the publisher of the book was listed as Eksmo, one of Russia’s largest publishing houses, but after Tolokonnikova and her husband announced that they had nothing to do with the book, Eksmo rushed to distance itself and claimed the only party responsible for the book was Algorithm. It’s possible the mistake arose from the fact that the book was distributed through a wholesaler owned by Eksmo—one from which it was hurriedly removed. However the chief editor of Algorithm, a historian of the security services by the name of Aleksandr Kolpakidi, may have played some role. Before he ran Algorithm, Kolpakidi worked as head editor of Yauza, a subsidiary of Eksmo specializing in a very particular type of literature. The most popular titles Yauza published were “Sky of the Slavs: A Hundred Centuries of Russian History,” “The Aryan Roots of Rus’,” and “The West Against Russia: The Thousand-Year War.”

Nevertheless, it’s unlikely that even a publishing house like Yauza would have dealt with an author the way Algorithm dealt with Sergei Khazov, a columnist at The New Times. In July 2013, Algorithm reached out to him with a proposal to publish a book consisting of his journalistic articles. Khazov told Meduza that he received the letter in July, when the whole editorial team was on holiday. He replied that he would have to ask his bosses for permission and that it would be better to get in touch again in August.

“They sent me a PDF, which I couldn’t open. I put everything off until I got back to Moscow. Yevgenia Albats, the head editor of The New Times, gave her blessing to the publication. We began to discuss a contract and financial questions. I saw the draft book, which was called ‘The Magnitsky List: What Putin Fears.’ It was impossible to let it go to print. The articles were arranged in a strange order. Many of what was there were not my texts, but material written by my colleagues or by my namesake, Sergei Khazov, another journalist with RFERL in Samara. Between the articles were these passages, which were stupid and barely literate, under which they’d also put my name. I wrote Algorithm a detailed letter with commentary and they agreed to take them out, but then suddenly Ivan Cherkasov, one of the lawyers at Bill Browder’s team in London writes to me, saying: What’s going on, Sergei? You’ve already written a book on Sergei Magnitsky and you didn’t say anything? He happened to have spotted it on Ozone [an online shopping service] and was very surprised. It turned out that Algorithm had published the book back in July and then sent me a contract. But the publishing house’s director, Sergei Nikolayev, and his colleagues were lying the whole time while discussing my corrections. What corrections can there be if the book is already in shops?” Khazov told me.

Despite the demand that the book be removed from the shelves, its print run has continued. You can find it quite easily today in Labyrinth book shop, for example, for the modest sum of 269 rubles (about $4.15). At the same time, no contract with the author has been signed to date (and it’s best not ask Khazov about the payment).

Algorithm not only fails to stand on ceremony with its ideological opponents, but also with authors close to its own views. Israel Shamir, a writer whose works have been banned as anti-semitic in France, is named as the author of the introduction that precedes Harding’s book. Shamir told Meduza that he had not been commissioned to write anything for them for the book. “I’ve written about Luke Harding a couple times, in truth, I think, primarily in English. But maybe I also wrote about him about in Russian (I don’t remember), but maybe Algorithm translated from English.”

However, in contrast to other authors, Shamir hasn’t come out against the use of his texts and generally is quite positive about the publishing house’s systematic unmasking of Russia’s enemies. He is critical only of the poor quality of Algorithm’s publishing. “My last book was also published inaccurately by them, and this isn’t the first time. And in my previous books there were also some howlers in the translations.” But, in Shamir’s opinion, Harding has no right to complain about similar issues, in as far as he’s “a combatant in the information war against Russia.” Shamir is convinced that Harding would never have allowed Algorithm or another publishing house to print a book like this during a time when “a country must know its heroes” and spies must be dragged out kicking and screaming into the light. In these conditions, the publisher was forced to break the letter of the law.

The publishers themselves see nothing out of the order in these practices. On Algorithm’s website is a declaration inviting anyone who wishes to help to “collect material on the Internet (articles, interviews, appearances, and so on) for the purposes of editorial work.” The payment for this work is 3,000 rubles (approximately $47) for each “block collected.” Moreover, in an interview for the radio station Echo of Moscow, Algorithm’s general director, Sergei Nikolayev, didn’t attempt to dispute the fact that Harding’s book was published without the consent of the author and even without an English source. In his words, this happened because he simply couldn’t get in touch with Harding. “No big deal, we’ll draw up a contract and pay him an honorarium. What’s the problem? It’s just he lives somewhere far from us… It’s easier for us to put out a little book. Then we reach out, we explain, and that’s all. I don’t think there can be any kind of claims on the part of the author just because their books have been published in another language, in another country. Usually no one worries too much about this. It’s good. On the contrary, they’re looking to get published.”

The publishing house’s main editor, Aleksandr Kolpakidi, was also unable to clarify the situation to Meduza. His version slightly contradicted Nikolayev’s. In Kolpakidi’s words, he was on holiday and hadn’t been in Moscow for a long time, and because of this was not in the loop on the details of the dispute. He was, however, convinced that this was simply an editorial mistake. Contracts were not sent to authors on time, but all sides had already come to agreements, or would come to agreements very soon, he said.

This habit of concluding contracts with authors and paying them money post-factum (when demanded or occasionally not at all) is not Algorithm’s only crime, either. In 2012, they included works by Joseph Goebbels and Benito Mussolini, which have been formally declared extremist in Russia, in their series “Prose of the Greats.” Officials fined the director and main editor of Algorithm and removed the books from stores. On the publishing house’s website is a notice, inviting the collaboration of any lawyer willing to represent the company in court, who has experience working with Article 280 of the Russian Criminal Code (which bans “public calls for the commission of extremist actions”).

Recently a lawsuit demanding that Algorithm be declared a bad debtor was brought by the publishing house Tsentrpoligraf (another publisher of rather nationalist literature). The crux of their claim lies in the fact that, in 2013, Algorithm published a pirated version of a book by Pyotr Bukeikhanov, “The Battle of Kursk, Which We Started,” the exclusive rights to which belonged to Tsentrpoligraf. On its website, Algorithm has given its own version of the events (saying Tsentrpoligraf published only the first of four tomes of the book, thus not fulfilling their own obligations to the author, and that Algorithm has published the full version). Nevertheless, the case has been brought to court and threatens to bankrupt the publishing house.

It is likely that the publishing house will simply run out of funds to pay its lawyers, if all those who have suffered at the hands of Algorithm decide to bring their claims to court. Considering their print runs are extremely small (the book attributed to Luke Harding has only had 2,000 copies printed) and almost all their publications are available for free online, the future commercial prospects for Algorithm look extremely dubious.