Zoshchenko, Mikhkhail Mikhailovich (1895 - 1958)	1935-1937., Leningrad, Khudozhestvennaia literatura 1940., 397, [3 p.] First printing, Hardcover, VERY GOOD.	€1000,00

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8vo (21 cm). Original gray cloth, decoratively embossed in white and gray on spine and boards. Six tipped-in toned plates by Soviet artist Aleksei Pakhomov (1900-1973). Boards rubbed and slightly soiled. VERY RARE. A collection of short stories, plays, and feuilletons by Mikhail Zoshchenko (1895-1958), one of the most significant Soviet writers of the 1920s and 30s. He was known for his use of skaz, a form of narrative that mimics spontaneous oral or folk speech, often in a dialect. Zoshchenko was first published in 1922 and quickly garnered recognition for his distinctive comical narrators, which often resembled simpletons with primitive views and suspect morals. After the infamous resolution of August 14, 1946 by the Central Committee, which condemned the writing of Anna Akhmatova and Zoshchenko for its lack of ideological content and supposed hostility toward Soviet culture, Zoshchenko's works, never published in large print runs, disappeared from the shelves of Soviet bookstores and libraries altogether, becoming subject to confiscation and destruction. The present volume contains the short stories 'Istoriia bolezni' and 'Parusinovyi portfel'', which were explicitly mentioned in a second decree from August 24, 1946 that castigated Zoshchenko's reactionary apoliticalness. Most copies were destroyed by special squads instructed by the censors to remove and destroy the books, often in overnight missions. As related to the cataloger by an eye-witness, a number of copies were saved by former police and Navy cadets who formed the squads. Though Zoshchenko was rehabilitated during Khrushchev's Thaw, his works were not published again until 1956 and continued to be viewed with suspicion by Soviet censors. Due to his extreme popularity in the 1930s and early 1940s, large numbers of his books were read to pieces by his admirers. Although he was rehabilitated during Khrushchev's Thaw, his works were not published again until 1956 and continued to be viewed with suspicion by Soviet censors. NOT IN HOUGHTON, NYPL OR BRITISH LIBRARY.