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[SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA] Bol’shevikam pustyni i vesny: Stikhi [i.e. To Bolsheviks of Desert and Spring: Verses]

Lugovskoi, V.

Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1931. Item #1428

70, [1] pp. 15х12 cm. In original illustrated cardboards. Rubbed and bumped, pencil signature on half-title, otherwise very good and clean.
Second edition of first collection. In all, the author published two collections under one title: the second book came out in 1933, later they were united into one volume and reprinted.

One of 5000 copies. Very rare in this condition.
A series ‘New Books of Proletarian Literature’ published editions of one format, with the same orange stripe on the front cardboard but various illustrations on them. This anonymous cover design features a photomontage of a field, an agricultural worker wearing national clothes and driving a tractor, as well as a camel that remained the principal kind of transport in Central Asia.
The whole edition, together with the title and the design, was dedicated to changes occured in the region under Soviet rule, a role that Central Asia played in Soviet agriculture and economy in general. Soon after the Revolution, Bolsheviks continued Russian control over Central Asia that existed in the Imperial period. The traditional lifestyle of this territory was transformed, getting closer to Russian. Socialist values and rules were promoted, preserving national cultures as much as possible. One of the key points of this politics was the liberation of Central Asian women. Also, among crucial Soviet campaigns was Vakhshstroi, meaning construction of the Vakhsh irrigation system in Tajikistan, that “turned a dead desert into a green valley” and allowed the successful cultivation of organic cotton. Thus, Bolsheviks had organised “a spring” for Central Asia.
This book of 12 poems by poet Vladimir Lugovskoi (1901-1957) was inspired by travelling to Central Asia in 1930. Apart from this topic, his verses included motifs of visiting the Ural Mountains, Transcaucasia, Russian North and European countries. In 1937, some of his works were blamed as “politically harmful”. Lugovskoi had to officially apologise but he hardly published after that and his creative crisis lasted until the 1950s.


The only two copies of this edition are located in University of North Carolina and NYPL.

Price: $400.00