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[BEFORE SOVIET REHABILITATION] Sbornik rasskazov [i.e. Collection of Short Stories]

Bulgakov, M.

Item #2063

New York: Izdatel’stvo im. Chekhova, 1952. [4], IV, [2], 199, [1] pp. 22х14,5 cm. In contemporary binding with front cover glued above. Rubbed, new endpapers, block is detached from back cover and spine, small stains occasionally, otherwise good.

One of 4990 copies. The editorial is written by V.A. Alexandrova. A posthumous emigre collection of Bulgakov’s works printed before Soviet rehabilitation-era editions.

This collection consists of ‘The Fatal Eggs’, ‘Diaboliad’, ‘#13. The House of Elpit Pabkomunna’, ‘Chichikov’s Adventures’. It almost fully reproduces the collection ‘Diaboliad’ (1925). It was reprinted the following year and was also printed in Riga in 1928. In 1930-1950, the collection “Diaboliad” was banned for sale by Glavlit and withdrawn from libraries. In official sources, Soviet literary scholars considered works ‘The Fatal Eggs’ and ‘Diaboliad’ as manifestations of “harmful tendencies” in Soviet literature of the 1920s, against which an ideological struggle was waged. In the 1960s, since a new wave of Soviet publications of Bulgakov’s prose, the collection ‘Diaboliad’ was released from library special storages and readers could get it in large libraries. Copies went on sale in second-hand bookstores and turned to samizdat copies.
Chekhov Publishing House was founded in late 1951 to print writings by repressed Soviet authors, among whom was Bulgakov. The edition was published in February 1952, along with books representing authors of the first and second emigration waves. In 1956, the publishing house was liquidated, by this time just over 20% of the copies had been sold. Over the next two years, their former warehouses managed by YMCA actively distributed published books free of charge and at reduced prices; some part of copies was destroyed.

Price: $350.00