MGSNKh (Moscow City Council of National Economy) was formed in 1918. It municipalized hundreds of local printing enterprises during the Russian Civil War when hoarding of ink, paper and production equipment was prevalent. For its own printing needs, the MGSNKh took over several printing houses such as the 2nd Typography Workshop, the 3rd State Typolithography Workshop (formerly owned by Ivan Kushnerev) and the 15th Lithographic Workshop formerly under the ownership of Ivan Mashistov.

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).