[AVANT-GARDE FOR SOVIET CHILDREN] Pioner: dvukhnedel'nyi illiustrirovannyi detskii zhurnal [Pioneer: a bi-weekly illustrated children's journal], vol. IV, no. 20.
Moscow: Glavlit, 1928. Quarto (33 × 25 cm). Original staple-stitched pictorial wrappers; 24 pp. Illustrated throughout mostly from drawings and smaller vignettes, including by Lev Bruni and M. Dobrokovskii. Wrappers lightly creased; old faint vertical crease; lightly toned throughout due to stock; still about very good. Item #55793
A single issue of this richly illustrated monthly literary and political journal for Soviet children and teens published 1924-1991. The magazine was an organ of the Pioneer movement, a communist children’s organization established in 1922 on the model of the pre-revolutionary Scouts. Each issue contained a section on school life, activities of the pioneers, articles on popular science and technology, art, sports and children’s creativity. The present issue includes contributions by top Soviet children’s author Vitalii Bianki, and illustrations by avant-garde painter and graphic artist Lev Bruni. Major political figures of the period, such as Nadezhda Krupskaia, Mikhail Kalinin, and Leon Trotsky contributed to various early issues of the journal. The first issue was published in March 1924 and was dedicated to the recently deceased Lenin. This first issue along with many other early issues were subsequently taken out of libraries and destroyed during high Stalinism due to the contributions from Trotsky and other repressed figures. Because of this literary “purging” most pre-WWII issues of the journal are very rare, despite its high print runs.
Price: €250.00