Two Books by Ilya Selvinsky – Moscow-Leningrad, 1930-1931 – Cover Designs by Alexander Surikov

Two Books by Ilya Selvinsky – Moscow-Leningrad, 1930-1931 – Cover Designs by Alexander Surikov
Two books by Ilya Selvinsky. Moscow-Leningrad (St. Petersburg), 1930-1931. Russian.
1. Командарм 2 [Komandarm 2], a play, 1930. Cover design by Alexander Surikov (1907-1946).
159, [1] pp, 20 cm. Good condition. Minor blemishes. Signature on front endpaper.
2. Пушторг [Pushtrog], rhymed novel, 1931. Hard cover, with dust jacket designed by Alexander Surikov.
192 pp, 19.5 cm. Good condition. Creases, stains and small tears to dust jacket. Signature on front endpaper.
Ilya Selvinsky (Илья Сельвинский, 1899-1968), a Jewish-Soviet poet and playwright, born in Simferopol (Crimean Peninsula). After graduating, he chose the life of a vagabond and tried his luck at several adventurous occupations, including fishing, working as a longshoreman and a circus wrestler and acting in an itinerant theater. At the same time, he started publishing his first poems, which stood out for their revolutionary, innovative approach and experimental language. In the early 1920s, he decided to abandon his life of travel and moved to Moscow, where he earned a reputation as one of the prominent poets of modernist Russian poetry. He was the leader of The Literary Center of Constructivists (LTsK) group until its dismantlement in 1930. When the USSR joined World War II, Selvinsky joined the communist party and was sent as a military reporter to the Crimean Peninsula. After witnessing the aftermath of the murder of approx. 2500 Jews near the city of Kerch, he published his poem "I Saw it!", which is considered to be one of the first literary texts about the Holocaust published in Soviet Russia. Selvinsky continued to publish in Yiddish and refused to hide his Jewish identity even in the most anti-semitic periods in Soviet Russia. He died in Moscow in 1968.