Almanakh vserossijskoi selsko-khoziaistvennoi kustarno-promyshlennoi vystavki Moskva 1923 g.
Folio (ca. 250 x 347 mm). 102 pp. plus a total of 34 pp. of adverts. With 3 exposition posters in colour reproduction, 7 black-and-white prints of photographs and artworks, 1 double-page plan of the exposition area, and 1 drawing with a view of the Kremlin (only the latter in the text). Contemporary blue half cloth over marbled boards. Includes the decorative original printed wrappers in black and gold.
$1,386.00
Very rare illustrated catalogue of the First All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition of 1923 held in Moscow, printed in Cyrillic type throughout. With a facsimile autograph of Lenin.
The Agricultural Exhibition was the first temporary exhibition complex of the post-revolutionary era to be built as a system of pavilions. It involved 225 wooden pavilions, the first samples of Russian avant-garde architecture, showcasing 150,000 exhibits. Promoting advanced agricultural techniques, the use of new crops and livestock breeds, it proved at the same time an effective tool of visual propaganda for Lenin's cooperative plan, and an impetus to organizing numerous regional and local agricultural fairs. A total of 5,000 exhibitors participated in the fair, including 600 concerns from Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Denmark, Belgium, China and Turkey. Over a duration of two months the exposition attracted 1,618,882 visitors.
The catalogue includes contributions by Michail Iwanowitsch Kalinin (1875-1946), the leader of the Agricultural Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, as well as by Western delegates, such as the diplomat Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau (1869-1928) and the economist Otto Auhagen (1869-1945). With several autographs featured in facsimile.
Binding slightly rubbed at extremities, upper cover a little soiled. Paper brittle with occasional marginal chips and flaws; the double-page exhibition plan torn in half. Still a good copy of this extremely rare publication, commemorating an event which was expected to launch a bright future for the young Soviet Union. Provenance: from the library of the National Socialist "Rußland-Institut der Auslandhochschule" in Berlin with their stamp to versos of title-page and last page. Latterly in the collection of Chimen Abramsky (1916-2010), London.
Not in OCLC.