Evstifeef Alexander (4 results)

Printed wraps. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. 8vo. Pp. 407. Blueish green wraps lettered in black with typographic border on front wrap. Light wear and minor curl to corners, slight lean. Evstifeef, a Russian emigré, worked on the docks in the Seattle shipyards and returned to Russia during their civil war, where he remained for five years.…

ed. paperback good condition only in wraps with pieces missing from the spine as well as the spine covering loose in a couple of places.

Condition: Very Good+. First edition. First and only edition, published and bound by the author. 114 pp, text corrected on final page. Typed label reading "ONLY THE WISE WILL READ AND UNDERSTAND" glued to verso of front wrap. Cord bound in unsophisticated printed wrappers. Very Good+ with several spots of foxing to covers, chipping at tail of spine, and dampstaining to first leaf and gutter of next few leaves. Curling to wraps; faint pencil inscription to p. 113. An interesting example of an early anti-Soviet account with elements of Outsider or kook literature in it. The Russian-born Alexander Evstifeef, who claimed to have smuggled himself out of the USSR in 1925, self-published several books about his experiences. This third-person narrative, somehow both messianic and pedantic, chronicles events that took place after he arrived in the United States and adopted the name "Alexander Freeman" in gratitude to the Land of the Free. Evstifeef's books drew some attention and mixed reviews locally; one acidic editorial in the Tacoma News Tribune ends with: "Could I be serious a for moment, I would say that gross exaggeration greatly lessens the effectiveness of propaganda as even the moron members of society can assimilate only a limited amount of bunk." A rare item with just four OCLC listings.…

Third edition (revised). Quarto (28cm). Pictorial pulp-paper wrappers; 116pp; illus. Text in two columns. Aging to the fragile wrappers, with some creasing at corners, wear but little loss to paper on spine; text toned but not brittle. Very Good overall, and uncommon thus. Title page bears an author's presentation stamp. The third of four editions, and the first in this quarto format (preceded by octavo editions in 1931 and 1932; reissued as "I Escaped From Workers Paradise" under the pseudonym Alexander Freeman, 1950). The text is not abridged, but differs considerably from the two earlier published versions. Evstifeef (i.e., Yevstifeyev), a Russian emigré dockworker in the Seattle shipyards, returned to the Motherland at the time of the Civil War to "fight for the rule of the Proletariat." He returned some five years later, deeply disillusioned and committed to spreading the gospel of anti-Bolshevism. The narrative conveys the utter bleakness of post-Revolutionary Russia during the Civil War and the Famine. While some of the author's details are no doubt simply rehashings of long-discredited anti-Bolshevik propaganda (e.g., the allegation that Trotsky forced his troops to lace their cigarettes with opium in order to make them reckless in battle), others, including his vivid descriptions of widespread disease, crime and malnourishment on the streets of Soviet cities, ring true. Though clearly biased, a scarce and quite lively account, by a first-hand witness, of the Revolution and its aftermath. OCLC notes about twenty physical holdings for any edition of the work; only four for this 1937 edition.…