A Black Sea youth

AKHMATOVA, Anna

U samogo moria [At the Edge of the Sea]
Alkonost, Skt. Peterburg, 1921. £750

The first edition of this important autobiographical poem by one of the best Russian poets, and a victim of Soviet censorship.

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Tolstoy's life and thoughts: a gathering of scarce pamphlets

TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich, Anna SEIRON [SEURON] and Nadezhda ZHIVAGO (artist)

Nikolai Palkin. Rabotnik Emelian i pustoi baraban. Dorogo Stoit [BOUND WITH:] Shest let v dome grafa Lva Nikolaievicha Tolstogo [AND WITH:] Assiriiskii tsar Assarkhadon. Tri voprosa [Nikolai "The Beater". Emelian the Worker and the Empty Drum. Too Dear! [BOUND WITH:] Six Years at the Household of the Count Tolstoy [BOUND WITH:] The Assyrian King Assarkhadon. Three questions]
I. V.Tcherttkoff, Purleigh, Maldon, England; II. Minkov, Skt Peterburg; III. Kushnerev for Posrednik, Moskva, 1899, 1895 and [1903]. £1,500

Banned works, illustrated tales, and memoirs of his household: a fine group of works by and about Tolstoy, most in first editions in Russian.

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A striking cover for a very rare book

BISSINGER, Edgar

Tainy masonstva [The Secrets of Freemasonry]
Maski doloi, Briussel [Brussels], [1930s]. £325

A fine if macabre cover design for this first Russian edition of a, anti-semitic and anti-mason (as expected) Nazi pamphlet translated for the Russian fascists. No copy traced outside Russia.

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A censored work - in amazing condition

[WICHSELL, Jöran]

Beskrifning om Rysslands Belägenhet/ Gräntzor/ Landskaper/ Städer/ Styrelse/ Macht/ Plägseder och andra Beskaffenheter nu för tijden
Olao Enaeo, Stockholm, 1706. £2,950

An exceptionnal example, uncut, unopened and unbound, of a banned and later destroyed account of Peter the Great's Russia. First edition, rare.

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Ethnic responsibility?

SHULGIN, Vasilii

'Chto nam v nikh ne nravitsia...' Ob Antisemitizme v Rossii ['What We Do Not Like About Them...' On the Antisemitism in Russia]
Russia Minor, Parizh, 1929. £375

"Political anti-Semitism', to be distinguished from a racial one: first edition of this scarce work, which also gives an account of the situation of the Jews in Russia.

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Account of 17th-c. Russia from a 'cabinet de lecture'

[COLLINS, Samuel]

Relation curieuse de l'estat present de la Russie
A Paris, chez Louis Billaine…, 1679. £2,000

Great (if often negative) early account of pre-petrine Russia, here in an unusual, uncut copy of the first French edition, from a private lending library with the label detailing its lending conditions. Includes the famous illustrated chapter on mushrooms - among many other remarks and anecdotes.

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'Russophobic' Western propaganda during WWII

Protoierei V. DEMIDOV

Russkaia zhizn v krivom zerkale inostrantsev [Russian Life in the Crooked Mirror of Foreigners]
National Printing & Publishing Co., Niu-Iork, 1942. £95

Against Western - but also Soviet - anti-Russian propaganda. By a military priest who first emigrated to Kharbin before the USA.

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Famine? Which famine?

VERBYTSKYI, M

Naibilshyi zlochyn Kremlia: zaplianovanyi shtuchnyi holod v Ukraini 1932-1933 rokiv [The Kremlin's Greatest Crime: the Planned Artificial Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933]
DOBRUS, London, 1952. £450

A striking cover for a striking book: the first extensive study of the 1930s Great Famine in Ukraine. First edition, published in London.

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Partially unopened, in the publisher's boards

TSVETAEVA, Marina Ivanovna

Razluka [Separation]
Sinaburg & co. for Gelikon, Moskva - Berlin, 1922. £1,500

An attractive example of this fragile production, Tsvetaeva's first poetry collection published abroad. First edition.

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A noted military theorist in Argentina

KHOLMSTON-SMYSLOVSKII, [Boris]

Izbrannye stati i rechi [Selected Articles and Speeches]
Dorrego for Rossiisk. voenno-natsionalnoe osvobodit. dvizh. im. Gen. A.V. Suvorova, Buenos Aires, 1953. £195

A volume of essays by a Russian anti-communist general, published in South America, where he advised the Argentinian president.

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Berlin's fauna of Russian immigrants

SHKLOVSKII, Viktor and El LISITSKII [LISSITZKY] (artist)

Zoo. Pisma ne o liubvi ili tretia Eloiza [Zoo. Letters Not About Love or the Third Eloise]
Gelikon, Berlin, 1923. £600

Cover design by El Lissitzky for this depiction of the Russian emigration in Berlin in the Golden Twenties.

The preferred first edition, rarer than the Russian one published shortly afterwards.

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Important early eyewitness account of Russia at a key moment

PETREJUS, Petrus

Regni Muschovitici sciographia. Thet är: een wiss och egenteligh beskriffning om Rydzland [History of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy. That is, a knowledgeable and accurate description of Russia]
Meurer, Stockholm, 1614-15. £2,750

Wide-ranging observations on Russia under and after Ivan the Terrible, including one of the first accounts of Siberian exile. The Macclesfield copy of the first edition.

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With many important poets of the Silver Age

TSVETAEVA, Marina Ivanovna, et al

Antologiia [Anthology]
Musaget, Moskva, 1911. £1,000

The young Tsvetaeva among other greats: Blok, Belyi, Solovev, Voloshin etc. Her second appearance in print, and the first of two poems of hers. With the original printed wrappers.

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Russian fascist printing in Shanghai

[BEILIS AFFAIR]

Obvinitelnyi akt o meshchanine Menakhile-Mendele-Teveve-Beilis: Istoricheskoe delo o ritualnom ubiistve kievskimi khassidami khristianskogo malchika Andreia Iushchinskogo 12 marta 1911 g [Indictment Against the Bourgeois Menahem Mendel Tevev Beilis: Historical Case of the Ritual Murder of the Christian Boy Andrei Iushchinskii by Kiev Hasidim on March 12, 1911]
Shankhai, Izd-vo D. V. Otdela russkoi fashistskoi partii, February 1934. £475

A rare work of historical manipulation, printed in China by Russian émigrés with Nazi sympathies.

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Great Ukrainian satire of the Cold War

KOZAK, Edvard and Liuboslav HUTSALIUK

Lys Mykyta [WITH] Lys Mykyta. Kalendar na rik 1949 [The Fox Mykyta [WITH] The Fox Mykyta. Calendar for Year 1949].
Kozak, Munkhen, [1948] and Detroit, Michigan, 1952-75. £3,950

A striking satirical magazine, published in the US in Ukrainian, remarkable for its Cold-War caricatures covering more than 20 years. An important run of more than 170 issues, with the very first 1949 Almanac.

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50 years later... still forbidden in Russia

ERMOLOV, Aleksei Petrovich, also YERMOLOV

Zapiski Alekseia Petrovicha Ermolova o voine 1812 goda [Notes of Aleksey Petrovich Yermolov about the war of 1812]
[Prince Peter Dolgoroukov, London, for] Tchorzewski, Londres and S. Gerstmann, Bruxelles, 1863. £1,250

Important eye-witness account of Napoleon's invasion of Russia: scarce first edition published in London because banned in Russia.

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With the rarest cover variant

SOLZHENITSYN, Aleksandr Isaevich

Odin den Ivana Denisovicha [One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]
Flegon Press, London, [1962]. £4,750

First edition of Solzhenitsyn's first book - here with the very rare variant of the cover showing a watchtower. A fine example of this great novel.

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With provenance

SHALAMOV, Varlam Tikhonovich

Kolymskie rasskazy [Kolyma Stories]
London, Overseas Publications Interchange, 1978. £1,250

First edition of this classic of "GULAG literature", with literary provenance.

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