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Vchera i segodnia: Al’manakh byvshikh pravonarushitelei i besprizornykh [i.e. Yesterday and Today: Almanac of Former Offenders and Street Children] #2 for 1933

Moscow: Sovetskaia literatura, 1933. Item #1522

259 pp.: ill. In original constructivist wrappers and photomontage dust-jacket. Dust-jacket restored, covers rubbed and bumped, otherwise very good and clean copy.
One of 5000 copies. Edited by a constructivist poet, Eduard Bagritskii.

An almanac relating to the phenomenon of Soviet working communes. It came out with an unusual photomontage dust-jacket design combining upper images of homeless children who, in the lower images, were transformed under the supervision of their masters into good and tidy workers.
These boarding-type institutions were formed for street children and juvenile offenders in the 1920s–1930s, on principles of self-sufficiency and self-government. Members of such communes were given an education and worked in various workshops some of which later developed into factories. Printed matter advertised their re-education and introduction to communist society.
Two collections were released in 1931–1933. Both included literary works by ex-offenders and former street children written during the period of intense industrialization. The second collection gathered stories, poems and plays, notably P. Bobrakov’s “Other Life”, dedicated to one of the instigators of the working communes, Felix Dzerzhinskii. The text is supplemented by a group photograph of members of the first working commune, together with two contributors to this almanac and three Soviet writers.
The Foreword was written by a former street child, the poet Pavel Zheleznov who, under the patronage of Maxim Gorky, initiated and released almanacs of a literary group composed of re-educated people.
Worldcat doesn’t list this edition.

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