ATAMAN TURNED NOVELIST
KRASNOV, Petr Nikolaevich.
Mantyk, okhotnik na l’vov. Povest’ [Mantyk, lion-hunter. A story].
Paris, V. Siial’skii, 1928.
8vo, pp. 320, [4], with illustrations in the text; a fine copy, unopened, in the original paper wrappers, printed in brown and blue.
Added to your basket:
Mantyk, okhotnik na l’vov. Povest’ [Mantyk, lion-hunter. A story].
First edition, an African safari adventure for younger readers, by the exiled ataman of the Don Cossacks.
Krasnov (1869–1946) was born into a Cossack family, and brought up to a military career, graduating from the military college in Pavlovsk in 1888. By 1910 he was commander of the First Siberian Cossack regiment, rising to major-general in the First Don division by 1914; during the October Revolution, Kerensky appointed him commander of the army, but after his defeat by the Bolsheviks, he fled to the Don region, where he was elected ataman of the Don Cossacks. He led a brief uprising against the Soviets but was again defeated en route to Moscow, and in 1919 retired to Germany and thence France, where he settled at St Denis, just north of Paris, and devoted himself to a literary career (he had been publishing short stories and travelogues in a small way since the 1890s). He scored his first hit with From Double Eagle to Red Flag (1921), a fictionalised epic history of the Russian Civil War from the view of a single White Russian officer, which was translated into many languages. His oeuvre of over twenty books included autobiographical works, historical fiction for a younger audience, novels of the émigré experience, and even neo-Romanov fantasy.
In 1938 Krasnov moved back to Berlin; he was invited out of his literary retirement in 1942 to help organise Cossack regiments in the German army. At the end of the war, despite his voluntary surrender to the British, he was handed over to the Soviets and executed.
