Bookvica

[TELINGATER] 1914: Dokumental'nyi pamflet [1914: A Documentary Pamphlet]

Feinberg, I., Telingater, S.

Item #2816

Moscow: MTP, 1934. [4], 92 pp., illustrated throughout, including two folding plates, nine red printed inserts, and seven protective tracing-paper overlays with quotations. 25 × 18 cm (9 ⅞ × 7 ⅛ in.). Original publisher's cloth binding. One of the folding pages has a piece missing (approximately 7x9 cm), image affected. Tear to one of the folding inserts (“Basel Pamphlet”) with a small loss of paper. Lacking the dust jacket, as is common with this edition. Otherwise a good, clean copy. First edition.

Striking Soviet photomontage publication issued on the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. Conceived as a documentary pamphlet, the volume presents the origins, course, and consequences of the conflict through a combination of archival photographs, quotations, political commentary, and experimental graphic design. Published during the height of the Stalinist illustrated-book movement, the work seeks to reinterpret the war through the lens of Soviet historical materialism, portraying it as an imperialist conflict that paved the way for revolutionary transformation.

The publication is especially notable for its innovative visual design by Solomon Telingater (1903–1969), one of the leading Soviet typographers and book designers of the interwar period. Telingater arranged the illustrations in the sequence of cinematic frames, creating a dynamic visual narrative that closely resembles contemporary documentary film. Political leaders and public figures are frequently rendered through photomontage and satirical visual juxtapositions, emphasizing the propagandistic and polemical character of the work. The volume incorporates many of the elements most closely associated with Telingater's mature style, including elaborate half-titles, fold-out compositions, colored inserts, transparent overlays, and an unusually sophisticated page architecture.

The author, Ilya Lvovich Feinberg (1905–1979), was a Soviet literary scholar, essayist, and historian of literature. Although best known for his studies of Alexander Pushkin, Feinberg also produced a number of documentary and historical works intended for a broad readership. In 1914 he combines historical narrative with political interpretation, creating a highly visual account of the First World War designed for Soviet readers of the 1930s.

Worldcat shows copies at Amherst College, California LA, Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, John Hopkins, Princeton, Utah Universities, Getty Institute, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, MoMA, NYPL.

Price: $1,200.00