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[A RUSSIAN CLASSROOM READER PUBLISHED FOR RUSSIANS IN SHANGHAI DURING THE SIBERIAN INTERVENTION] Mir v rasskazakh dlya detey: Vtoraya posle bukvarya kn. dlya kl. chteniya v nach. uchilishchakh [i.e. The World in Stories for Children: The Second Book after the ABC Book for Class Reading in Primary Schools]

Vakhterov, V., Vakhterova, E.

Item #2402

[Vladivostok, Shanghai]: russkoye knigoizdatel’stvo i tipografiya v Shankhaye, [1919]. 234 pp.: 170 black-and-white ills. 23,3x15,3 cm. In original publisher’s illustrated wrappers. Good. Neat restoration of the spine with a cloth. Loss of small pieces at the edges of the wrappers. light soiling of the front wrapper, tears of the spine.

Scarce. First edition published in 1900. Text in Russian.

A historically significant Russian classroom reader, issued by the renowned Vladivostok-based Brother Sinkevichs’ publishing house during the Siberian Intervention and likely intended for the Russian diaspora in Shanghai. Due to the occupation of Vladivostok, the book was apparently printed by Shanghai’s first Russian publishing house, Russkoye knigoizdatel’stvo i tipografiya komiteta obshchestvennoy pomoshchi (Russian Book Publishing and Printing House of the Public Assistance Committee), managed by N. I. Sokolov and G. A. Kokhman. As noted by Khisamutdinov in Russian Life in Shanghai (2014), by 1919, this was the city’s only Russian publishing enterprise, and only a handful of its books are known today. Despite extensive research, we found no other editions printed by this Shanghai publishing house in the catalogue of the National Library of Russia.
The Mir v rasskazakh dlya detey series by Vasily and Emilia Vakhterov was one of the most widely used pre-revolutionary Russian primary school textbooks, based on principles of object based learning and visualization. These readers were published in numerous cities of the Russian Empire and saw multiple revisions, with religious sections added and Darwinist ideas removed in later editions. Our Vladivostok-issued copy, structured into 13 sections with illustrated short stories, omits the religious chapter and
contains no Darwinist content, reflecting the editorial changes of the time. After 1917, Mir v rasskazakh remained in publication until V.P. Vakhterov’s death in 1924, and was never reissued, making our copy of the book one of its last editions.

Our copy likely belonged to a Russian expatriate in Shanghai, a city where the Russian community expanded dramatically following the fall of the Provisional Priamurye Government at the end of the Russian Civil War. Initially small, Shanghai’s Russian population grew rapidly with the arrival of the Siberian Navy flotilla from Vladivostok, one of the last military units loyal to the White movement. By 1925, over 10,000 Russian émigrés had settled in the city, with many drawn from Harbin by its booming economy.

Price: $750.00