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[JANUARY OF 1942] Prezrenie k smerti [i.e. The Despite Towards The Death]

Kazan': Sovetskiy pisatel’, 1942. Item #992

41, [2] pp. 16x11 cm. Original illustrated wrappers. Good condition.

First edition. Rare. An important collection of short stories by nine Soviet authors.

‘Sovetskiy pisatel’ was one of the main literary publishing houses with several regional branches. This book was prepared by the Moscow branch when the publishing house was evacuated to Kazan. At the same time the branch in Tashkent continued to print books, while in Leningrad the local office of ‘Sovetskiy pisatel’ was destroyed in September of 1941 after the bomb fell directly on its building.

The edition was sent to the printers on the 2nd of January of 1941, a month after the Soviet counter strike secured the defense of Moscow. At the time Rzhev-Vyazemsky operation of 1942 was still ongoing, the counter-attack on the Moscow front, the one that resulted in the deaths of over million people on both sides of the frontline.

Most of the stories in the book are based on the Soviet experience in Smolensk, Leningrad and Moscow regions. The total of 9 short stories were printed by war correspondents Evgeniy Kriger (1906-1983), Nikolay Tikhonov (1896-1979), Vadim Kozhevnikov (1909-1984), Ezra Vilenskiy (1902-1944), a volunteer who later died in action, and others.

The only copy located in McGill University Library (according to Worldcat).

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