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[AN EXTREMELY RARE 1941 RUSSIAN-GERMAN PHRASEBOOK] Kak ob”yasnyat’sya po nemetski: Russko-nemetskiy razgovornik [i.e. How to Communicate in German: A Russian-German Phrasebook]

Bagretsova-Shmidt, E.

Item #2736

Paris: Y.M.C.A. Press, 1941. 72 pp. 22x13,1 cm. In original printed wrappers. Front wrapper loose, tears of the spine, soiling of the rear wrapper, but otherwise good. With a tipped in contemporary tissue paper with a child’s pencil drawings, apparently from a previous owner.

Scarce first edition. Second edition published in 1944. Text in Russian and German.

An extremely rare wartime edition of Russian-German phrasebook published in occupied Paris by E. I. Bagretsova-Shmidt in 1941.
Following the German occupation of Paris in June 1940, the city’s 50,000-strong Russian émigré community faced extreme poverty and the immediate disbanding of their established cultural institutions. While many fled to destinations like Spain or the United States, those who remained navigated a complex ideological landscape. The 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union deeply fractured the community’s loyalties: some joined the French Resistance, while others collaborated with the Gestapo. Despite these grim realities, the German Military Command permitted a tightly controlled cultural revival between 1942 and 1944, leading to the establishment of new theaters, concerts, and the German-funded newspaper Parizhskii vestnik (Paris Herald). Against this background, the publication of Bagretsova-Schmidt’s 1941 phrasebook served as a highly practical tool for survival, employment, and communication in a city where German had become the language of authority. Our copy of the edition likely belonged to a member of this Parisian Russian diaspora, possibly a Gestapo agent or collaborator operating within this deeply divided community.
The book was published by the renowned YMCA-Press, an institution that had previously served as the vibrant intellectual heartbeat of “Russian Paris.” However, by 1941, the Gestapo had launched mass roundups of Russian émigrés, placing the press under severe censorship and confiscating “ideologically incompatible” texts. Considering that the book was made available to the public, the edition apparently was seen by the censors as ideologically innocuous, or perhaps even practically beneficial to the occupying administration.
The edition provides an accessible system for rapid language acquisition, featuring approximately 3,000 everyday expressions. Most entries present a Russian phrase alongside its German translation and a helpful Cyrillic phonetic transcription to ensure proper pronunciation. The vocabulary is logically organized into highly functional themes, encompassing social etiquette, dining, health, shopping, leisure, and essential daily logistics such as telling time or using the telephone. To complete the guide, the author concludes with a concise grammatical overview detailing fundamental rules for nouns, adjectives, and verbs.
Overall, extremely rare historical survival from the Russian diaspora in German-occupied Paris.

Worldcat shows 1 copy of the edition at the University of North Carolina.

Price: $1,200.00