Why I Escaped from Soviet Russia
Seattle: By the author, 1937. Third edition (revised). Quarto (28cm). Pictorial pulp-paper wrappers; 116pp; illus. Text in two columns. Aging to the fragile wrappers, with some creasing at corners, wear but little loss to paper on spine; text toned but not brittle. Very Good overall, and uncommon thus. Title page bears an author's presentation stamp.
The third of four editions, and the first in this quarto format (preceded by octavo editions in 1931 and 1932; reissued as "I Escaped From Workers Paradise" under the pseudonym Alexander Freeman, 1950). The text is not abridged, but differs considerably from the two earlier published versions. Evstifeef (i.e., Yevstifeyev), a Russian emigré dockworker in the Seattle shipyards, returned to the Motherland at the time of the Civil War to "fight for the rule of the Proletariat." He returned some five years later, deeply disillusioned and committed to spreading the gospel of anti-Bolshevism. The narrative conveys the utter bleakness of post-Revolutionary Russia during the Civil War and the Famine. While some of the author's details are no doubt simply rehashings of long-discredited anti-Bolshevik propaganda (e.g., the allegation that Trotsky forced his troops to lace their cigarettes with opium in order to make them reckless in battle), others, including his vivid descriptions of widespread disease, crime and malnourishment on the streets of Soviet cities, ring true. Though clearly biased, a scarce and quite lively account, by a first-hand witness, of the Revolution and its aftermath. OCLC notes about twenty physical holdings for any edition of the work; only four for this 1937 edition.
Price: $450.00