Povest' o ryzhem Motele,

Octavo 14x10.5 cm., illustrated boards, 46 pp., with original dust jacket illustrated in color. 7000 copies. (A Tale about Red-haired Motel, the Honorable Inspector, Rabbi Isaiah, and Commissar Blokh) Iosif Utkin (1903-1944) joined the Bolsheviks in 1917 and discovered his poetic voice soon after while in the Workers' Squad during the civil war in Irkutsk. He rose in the ranks of the Komsomol as both poet and journalist, achieving prominence in his poetry appearing in Molodaia Gvardiia. His poem The Tale of the Redhaired Motel, Mr. Inspector, Rabbi Isaiah and Commissioner Blokh is his most well-known work which originally appeared in those pages. Prior to this he read it alongside Mayakovsky who championed him, to great acclaim. The poem was declared "nezauriadyi" and widely circulated in poetry circles and the intelligentsia. This publication is illustrated with a fine cover design, title and motifs by Adolf Strakhov (Strakhov-Braslavskii, 1896-1979), renowned for his graphic designs of iconic posters for the state. OCLC finds no institutional holdings for this version from Khar'kiv with Strakhov, and only two for the Moscow edition with another illustrator. VG++ in VG dust wrapper.