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[CONQUERING THE KARAKUM DESERT] Moskva – Kara-Kum – Moskva [i.e. Moscow – Karakum – Moscow]

El-Registan, Brontman, L.

Item #2767

Moscow: Sovetskaia literatura, 1934. 227 pp.: ill. 26,5x20,5 cm. In original illustrated cardboards, in original illustrated dust jacket, with illustrated endpapers, colored head. Rubbed, dust jacket slightly repaired, pale water stain on dustjacket, covers bumped and slightly deformed, otherwise good and clean internally.

First and only edition. Very rare with a dust jacket.

Designs of the dust jacket, covers, endpapers, photomontages and layout are created by Mikhail Miloslavsky (1907-1965). This book designer and illustrator worked on constructivist covers of the magazine ‘Proletarian Cinema’. For this edition, he used photographs by Soviet masters Roman Karmen, Bagdan and Mikhail Prekhner. He put an ornament of wheels to the covers and designed a route map overlaid on a pattern of minimalist trucks for endpapers.

This edition features a narrative “composed on the Bolshevik victory over the desert” — a victory achieved through an extraordinary automobile race. Between July and September 1933, a legendary route was charted: Moscow – Gorky – Cheboksary – Kazan – Samara – Orenburg – Aktyubinsk – Kzyl-Orda – Chimkent – Tashkent; then from Chardzhou across the Karakum Desert to Krasnovodsk. After crossing the Caspian Sea, the journey pressed on: Baku – Tiflis – Armavir – Rostov-on-Don – Kharkov – Voronezh – Tula – and finally back to Moscow. This vast route, winding through diverse roads and climatic zones, was conquered by twenty-one automobiles — four foreign models and seventeen Soviet vehicles, two of which were experimental. Eighty-four men took part in this great trial: drivers, engineers, researchers, cameramen, and journalists.

Among them were two Soviet journalists who left vivid records of the journey: El-Registan (Gabriyel Ureklyan; 1899–1945) and Lazar Brontman (1905–1953). Brontman would go on to become the first journalist to visit the North Pole, and later covered the Arctic expeditions, the early construction of the Moscow Metro, and major state events.

To accelerate the country's industrialization, it was necessary to conduct road tests that would demonstrate the suitability (or lack thereof) of automobiles for Soviet roads and reveal design weaknesses. This remarkable race captured the attention of the entire nation. Soviet citizens dedicated sports records to the route participants, celebrated the fulfillment of production targets, opened new workers' clubs, welcomed the vehicles, and presented gifts. The race became an instrument of propaganda and cultural exchange among the Soviet nations during a period of profound transformation.

Worldcat shows copies located at Indiana, John Hopkins, Princeton and Yale Universities, NYPL.

Price: $2,500.00