First printed edition of a letter written by Solzhenitsyn in September 1973 to a number of upper echelon Soviet officials - his last attempt to address the powers of the Soviet Union before his deportation in February 1974. When it first appeared in English, printed in The Times on March 3rd 1974, it was described as ‘a testament of astonishing power, with uncanny relevance to our own problems in the West’.

Commenting on relations with the West, the war with China, the dead-end of civilisation, the situation in North-East Russia, internal development, and the Soviet ideology, Solzhenitsyn asserts: ‘Let us come to our senses in time, let us change our course!’

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First edition, no. 38 of 150 copies, of a poetical collection by the émigré poet, satirist and feuilletonist Aminad Shpolyansky. A journalist during the First World War, Shpolyansky emigrated to Paris shortly afterwards. ‘With his poetry and prose … he continued the classical tradition of Russian humour with its compassion for the “small man” … Published in Paris in 1935, Don-Aminado’s book Bare garden assembled alongside poetical works, a cycle of aphorisms under the general title “The new Koz’ma Prutkov” [a fictional author invented by Aleksei Tolstoy] … brilliantly witty and wicked. He casts doubts on all moral values – brotherly love, friendship, kindness, justice’, in a manner reminiscent of both Koz’ma Prutkov and Oscar Wilde' (Literaturnaia entsiklopediia russkogo zarubezh’ia 1918-1940).

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[VOLYNSKII, A., pseud. [i.e. Akim Lvovich Flekser.]

Parfenon. Sbornik Pervyi [Parthenon. First collection (All published)].

The first and only issue of a literary journal edited by A. Volynsky (1863–1926). It includes contributions from Akhmatova (the poem ‘Kak mog ty’ published in Anno Domini (1922)), Fet, Marietta Shaginian (an 8-page piece on her idol Goethe and Weimar), and others.

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