OLD DOLLS by BEDNYI

Moscow: gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo Khudozhestvennoi Literatury, 1953 ¶ FIRST POSTHUMOUS EDITION and still the standard annotated edition; comprising verse, epigrams, fables, stories, tales, feuilletons, poems, articles, and letters by one of the most prolific and successful writers of the Soviet period; edited by A. A. Volkov with notes by Isaak Eventov (author of the standard life of Bednyi, 1953). The author's real name was Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov. ||| Collation: Five volumes in 8s (199 x 127 mm). Five halftone plates (portraits). Binding: Publisher's red art morocco. References: Muratova 114; Tarasenkov 39/2; Terras 42/2. Condition: A fine set..

Early edition of Bednyi's satirical anti-religious cycle of poems, based on the Old Testament story, which casts Moses as a Bolshevik, leading his people to the promised land of communism. The author, Demian Bednyi (pseudonym of Efim Alekseevich Pridvorov, 1883-1945), was a popular satirist writing for the two major Soviet newspapers "Pravda" and "Izvestiia" and was widely known as the master of agitational literature. According to Maxim Gorky's memoirs, Lenin "strenuously and repeatedly stressed the agitational significance of the work of Demyan Bednyi, but said: "It's a little rough. Follows the reader, but you have to be a little bit ahead." Bednyi was born in a small village in modern day Ukraine. His unadorned language and village humor as well as knowledge of the Biblical texts, which he could successfully reference and satirize, made his songs and propaganda poems very popular among the people, and especially with the soldiers in the Red Army. In this text, an epigraph quoting from the Old… Read More