First Russian translation

Engels, Friedrich. Krest'ianskaia voina v Germanii. Perevod s nemetskago G. Kotliara, pod redaktsiei A. Finna-Enotaevskogo [The German Peasants' War. Translated from the German by G. Kotliar, edited by A. Finn-Enotaevskii].

St. Petersburg, Tip. T-va "Narodnaia Pol'za", [1905].

128 pp. Staple-stitched blank wrappers (as issued?). 8vo.

 8.500,00

First Russian translation of Engels's important history of the German Peasants' War of 1525, begun shortly after the German revolutionary events of 1848 and published in a series of articles in Neue Rheinische Zeitung. This was the first work to argue that the reasons for the uprising had been socio-economic, rather than cultural or religious. It also deduced from its failure the need for collaboration between the peasants and the urban proletariat. The present edition contains a translation of Engels's new preface written in 1874, for the third 1875 edition, as well as a preface by the editor, which cites a letter written by Engels shortly before his death. Aleksandr Finn-Enotaevskii (1872-1943) was a noted Russian Marxist who fled abroad after being arrested and collaborated with the Bolsheviks and Lenin himself; after 1917 he was closer to the Menshevik faction. He was prosecuted during the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s.

Not in the Bernstein-Souvarine catalog. This copy has a curious provenance: an undocumented Russian student organization in a small Saxon town, possibly allied with revolutionary tendencies. Rare; KVK and OCLC only locate the copies at Bibliothèque de Genève and IISG. Not at the Russian State or National Libraries.

Art.-Nr.: BN#47831 Schlagwörter: ,