Dobrzhitskii, [Viktor Liudvigovich], editor.

[THE BOLSHEVIK SALE OF RUSSIAN CULTURAL HERITAGE ABROAD] Mezhdunarodnaia kniga (Mejdounarodnaya kniga). International Book co. Nos. 31 (1931); 72 (1932); 5, 10, 15, 17, 21, 29, 31–32, 34–38 (1933); 38, 44, 51 (1934); 64 (1935).

Moscow; Leningrad: 1931–1935. Octavos (23 × 16 cm to 21 × 14 cm). Original staple-stitched printed wrappers; 25–70 pp per issue. In Russian, French, German, English. Most issues with light soil to wrappers, stamps of a Spanish library and notes in blue ink to front wrapper, else about very good. The issues from 1931 fragile, with wrappers detached and spine disintegrated, chipped along the edges. No. 15 (1933) with the front wrapper missing bottom half. Item #55751

A collection of eighteen catalogs (1931–1935) of a rare book enterprise operated by the Soviet government, with branches in Moscow and Leningrad, exporting books and artefacts internationally. The rear wrappers state: “Mezhdunarodnaia kniga is the only organization exporting old and rare books out of the USSR. We have an antiquarian shop containing a large number of rare and valuable editions as follows: Belles letres artistically bound, Ethnography, Folklore, Theology, Law, History, Old prints, Hand written manuscripts, Religious oil paintings, etc.” The export of such cultural heritage, which included foreign and domestic publications, out of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, famously provided the cash-strapped Soviet government with foreign currency for the purchase of technology and machinery necessary for the rapid industrialization of the first five-year plan. Some of the catalog issues focused on a specific topic, such as “Folklore”, “Far East, Siberia, the Caucasus and Crimea”, “Memoires, History, Biography”, “Ancient manuscripts” among others. A large portion of the listed titles were published in foreign languages such as French, German, or English, likely taken out of the libraries or personal collections of the nobility that were nationalized by the Bolsheviks as their owners fled the country after the revolution. Of special note is the catalog of “Ancient manuscripts” that includes numerous seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Qurans, as well as old Slavonic ecclesiastical texts dating back to the fifteenth century. The editor of the catalogs, Viktor Dobrzhitskii (1904–1937), was head of the export department of the Leningrad branch of “International books” from 1933, until his arrest and execution in 1937.

As of May 2026, KVK, OCLC show scattered issues of the catalogs in six institutions worldwide, of them four in North America.

Price: €1,500.00

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