Kh.M. is the abbreviation for the State Free Artists' Studios (Khudozhestvenye Masterskie), a poster arts cooperative of Izogiz publishers. In 1930, Kh.M studios existed only in Moscow and Leningrad and it was turning out propaganda for the First Five-Year Plan and for the efforts of collectivization. The earliest poster works created by the cooperative thus reflect these two themes. 

The State Lithography Workshop named for M. Tomskii was located at Kronverkskaia and Mir Streets in Leningrad (Petrograd). The workshop was named in honor of Mikhail Pavlovich Tomskii (1880-1936), head of the Soviet trade union and the head of the State Publishing House. Historically, the large printing operation was founded in 1881 by Theodore Kibbel (Fedor Fyodorovich Kibbel). Shortly after the printer was nationalized by the Soviets, it became the 1st State Lithography Workshop, and in 1924 it was named in honor of Tomskii. Thereafter, it underwent a variety of name changes while being controlled by state-run printing trusts.

The history of IzoGiz begins with the formation of Ogiz, the Association of the State Book and Magazine Publishers. In 1930, the Sovnarkom of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic established Ogiz to centralize publishing under a monopoly in order to eliminate duplication of printed material, to streamline and control publishing production and its output, and to create a base for marketing books, training and technical manuals. In 1931, the Central Committee of the USSR ordered certain publications be separated from Ogiz. The separation 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. In 1963, Izogiz was merged with the publishing house, "Soviet Artist" (Sovetskii khudozhnik).