Istoriko-revoliutsionnyi al'manakh izdatel'stva "Shipovnik." Pod obshchei redaktsiei V. L. Burtseva [Historical revolutionary almanac of the publisher "Shipovnik", edited by V. L. Burtsev]

1907. St. Petersburg: Izdatel'stvo "Shipovnik"; tip. "Delo", [1907]. Octavo (22.6 × 15.9 cm). Contemporary half-calf binding with gilt tooling and title to spine, original wrappers not preserved; 382, [1] pp. Twelve leaves of illustrations. Lacking the index (XXVIII pp.); binding rubbed at spine extremities; old Latvian bookstore stamp; still good or better. Rare calendar commemorating various milestones and key figures of the Russian revolutionary movement, the print run of which was largely confiscated and destroyed by the Tsarist police, sparing only a small number of copies that had already been distributed. The reason is quite clear: aside from events such as the zemstvo reform of 1864 and the founding of the State Duma, the almanac also lists the dates of major terrorist attacks, assassinations, as well as mass uprisings, in addition to the publishing dates of important revolutionary journals, and the decisive trials or executions of early revolutionary martyrs. These are arranged in order, from January 1 through December 31, and range from the early nineteenth century through 1906. Many of the entries were written by noted writers and activists, such as the expressionist Leonid Andreev, the realist Aleksandr Kuprin, or the future critic and Soviet cultural commissar Anatoly Lunacharsky. The book reproduces photographs of many relatively little-known terrorists, and is especially noteworthy for the lovingly executed calendar leaf illustrations for each month, which were executed in black and red by such noted artists as Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Boris Anisfel'd, Ivan Bilibin, Boris Kustodiev, Eugene Lanceray, and Zinovii Grzhebin. The book was reprinted in 1917 as "Kalendar' russkoi revoliutsii," and appears equally uncommon as such. The Bernstein-Souvarine catalog lists the 1917 re-edition (no. 131), but not the 1907 first printing. KVK and OCLC locate copies at Berkeley, Cambridge, Chicago, Hoover, Library of Congress, Madison-Wisconsin, Syracuse, as well as the German State Libraries in Berlin and Munich. (Inventory #: P5795)