Garvi, P[etr Abramovich].

[MENSHEVIK ANTI-BOLSHEVIK TREATISE] Zakat bol’shevizma. Desiat’ let diktatury [The end of Bolshevism. Ten years of dictatorship].

Riga: Izdatel’stvo P.S. “Nakotnes kultura”, 1928. Octavo (20 × 13.5 cm). Original printed wrappers; 52 pp. Hoover Institute stamp to front and rear wrapper. Wrappers lightly toned; lower right corner of front wrapper chipped; spine extremities frayed; frequent underlining in pencil throughout, still good or better. Item #P6537

Published on the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, this brochure by the Menshevik Petr Garvi (born Bronshtein; 1881-1944) launches a virulent attack against ten years of Bolshevism in Russia. In the brochure, Garvi critiques the Bolshevik rise to power, which he sees as “violent” and “dictatorial”, and analyzes their subsequent policies such as the agrarian reform, their international politics and the living conditions of workers. In 1900, Garvi joined Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDRP) the party of Lenin, until the split between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks in 1903, with Lenin on the side of the Bolsheviks. As a representative of RSDRP, Garvi conducted activist work in Odessa, Kiev, Moscow and Rostov-on-Don until his arrest and subsequent exile in 1902. In exile Garvi became close with the older revolutionary and his subsequent mentor Pavel Akselrod (to whom the brochure is dedicated), and Yuliy Martov, the future leader of the Mensheviks, two relationships which influenced his Menshevik leanings. After the Bolshevik revolution, Garvi moved to Odessa and briefly headed one of the Menshevik factions until he was forced to emigrate in 1923, continuing his political and publishing abilities abroad, publishing brochures such as this one.

With the stamp of the “B. I. Nicolaevsky Collection” to front and rear wrapper. Boris Nicolaevsky (1887-1966) was a Russian revolutionary (Menshevik) who lived in emigration starting in 1922. He amassed an important collection on the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia and sold the collection to the Hoover institution in 1963. A deaccession letter from the Hoover collections can be supplied upon request. Scarce in the trade.

Price: €200.00

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