AST is one of the largest book publishing companies in Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. AST and its rival Eksmo

Eksmo

Eksmo is one of the largest publishing houses in Russia. Eksmo and its rival AST together publish approximately 30% of all Russian books.Established in 1991 as a small book-selling company, they gradually developed into a major player on the Russian market, discovering and developing detective...

 together publish approximately 30% of all Russian books. The company is headed

General Director

In CIS corporate governance, the general director is the highest executive position in a company, analogous to a US CEO or a UK managing director...

 by Oleg Bartenev (Олег Бартенев). It owns a bookstores chain "Bukva" ' onMouseout='HidePop("15533")' href="/topics/Letter_(alphabet)">Letter

Letter (alphabet)

A letter is a grapheme in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Letters compose phonemes and each phoneme represents a phone in the spoken form of the language....

).

Among AST partners are publishing companies Astrel, Zebra E, Molodaya Gvardiya

Molodaya Gvardiya (publisher)

Molodaya Gvardiya is one of the oldest publishers in Russia, having been founded in 1922 during the Soviet era. From 1938 until 1992, it was responsible for publishing the magazine Vokrug sveta....

, CenterCom, bookstores Moscow and Biblio Globus and online shops, such as Ozon.ru

Ozon.ru

Ozon is one of the first online shops in Russia, established in 1998 by the Russian software house Reksoft. Its main goods are books, electronics, music, and movies. As of 2005, it is the largest online retailer in Russia...

. In 2008 AST purchased Avanta+. It also owns comic book and manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 publisher Comics Factory

Comics Factory

Comics Factory is a comics imprint of major Russian book publisher AST. It serves as a translator and the licensor of European graphic novels, Japanese manga, manhwa, Taiwan and Hongkong manhua, Original English-language manga. It also released Russian-language manga of Russian and Ukrainian...

.

History

The company was established in 1990 by Alexei Gertsev, Sergei Derevianko and Tatiana Derevianko as "Creative Cooperative Association AST" . AST is an abbreviation meaning Alexei-Sergei-Tatiana. In 1993 the company was divided into AST itself, headed by Alexei Gertsev, and AST-PRESS.