Aleksei Kruchenuikh and Velimir Khlebnikov are two of the most important representatives of futurism in Russian literature. They called themselves cubofuturists, thus expressing their bond with cubist painters.
Kruchenuikh coined the name »zaumnuy yazuik« for the new language of cubofuturistic poetry, which was later also called »zaum«. »Slovo kak takovoe« (The Word as Such) was published in 1913. The authors called on their readers to revolutionise syntax, shatter metrics, develop new rhymes and to give words new contents or rob them of their semantic content.
A futuristic drawing of the Russian artist and theoretician Kazimir Malevich appears on the cover. Malevich is regarded as the most radical advocate of abstract art in Russia.