Stepniak Sergey (6 results)

Hard Cover. Condition: Good. No Jacket. The final book by the Russian anarchist, assassin and political agitator. Stepniak's views had evolved from advocating violence toward peaceful agitation to achieve political reform. Second edition. Both volumed bumped and rubbed with wear and fraying at the corners and spine ends, a couple of drip marks on the rear board of volume 1. Spines cocked, binding a bit loose.…

Hardback. Printed pages: 651. Condition: Very Good. New Edition. Maroon cloth binding. Light stain to rear board. Light foxing and browning to page edges. Tanning to free endpapers. Good solid binding. Clean text throughout. Overall condition is Very Good. Size: 5.5 x 7.75 inches (13.5 x 20 cm).

First Edition. 8vo, pp.[1 (blank)], 253, [3 (blank)]; a very good copy in the original publisher's printed red cloth, without dustjacket; a little rubbed with a few small marks.Scarce first American edition in Yiddish of Stepniak's first and most influential book. Written in Italian during exile in Switzerland following his assassination of Nikolai Mezentsov, chief of Alexander II's secret police, Underground Russia was published in 1882 and translated into English the following year. Comprising introductory essays on nihilism, propaganda, and terrorism, followed by biographies of early Russian revolutionaries and accounts of revolutionary incidents, the work was widely translated and influential in anti-Tsarist circles in Europe and America. Published in the wake of the Revolution, this translation is by Abraham Frumkin, one of the leading translators of mainly political literature into Yiddish and contributor to the daily New York paper Yiddishe Welt. This is the second Yiddish translation we have been able to trace, preceded only by an even rarer edition published by Shapiro in London in 1897 (issued in '17 Hefte', according to the New York Public Library). The text is here prefaced by a short biography of Step niak. Language: Other.…

Condition: Very Good. New York: Max Maisel, 1921. First Yiddish-Language Edition, translated by Frumkin. Octavo. 253pp. Text in Yiddish. Red pebbled cloth lettered in black. Bookplate of Cincinnati Rabbi Samuel Wohl to front pastedown. Patchy wear along spine; corners bumped. Binding sound and pages unmarked; a Very Good copy. Uncommon Yiddish edition of Stepniak's survey of radicalism in Imperial Russia, originally published in 1882 and featuring Sophia Perovskaya, Peter Kropotkin, and Hesya Helfman.…

Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. New York: Max Maisel, 1921. First Yiddish-Language Edition in a later dust jacket, translated by Frumkin. Octavo. 253pp. Text in Yiddish. Printed dust jacket with later date (1929), presumably a later issue, though we have been unable to locate any other copy in dust wrapper for comparison. Red pebbled cloth lettered in black. Dust jacket lightly rubbed and edgeworn with chip to base of spine and several closed tears. Light wear to spine ends of boards; binding sound; pages unmarked; Very Good. Uncommon Yiddish edition of Stepniak's survey of radicalism in Imperial Russia, originally published in 1882 and featuring Sophia Perovskaya, Peter Kropotkin, and Hesya Helfman.…

First Edition. Octavo. 17.5cm. Publisher's green pebble grain cloth titled in gilt to spine. [vi]; [1]; 401pp.+6pp. ads to rear. Light rubbing to corners, slight scuffing and some minor bumping to spine ends, with a small spot stain at the very head of the spine, small dent to upper edges of the boards; internally clean, with some superficial soiling to the page edges, ownership of Pennsylvania historian Gertrude Bosler Biddle to front flyleaf. A very good, clean and handsome copy. [WITH] [London: 1890-93]. Three ALS [autograph letters signed] on folded stationery sheets, as follows: 1. Dated "March 31" without year; from context, ca. 1888-1890. 2pp, ca. 250 words, in black ink; datemarked St. John's Wood, March 31. Requesting the publisher's permission to commission a German translation of his Russian Peasantry, which first appeared in 1888 with a second edition in 1890. Stepniak proposes 50/50 division of royalties and identifies the translator as [Victor] Adler, who has just been sentenced to three months in prison and thus now has "ample leisure" for undertaking the translation. Adler (1852-1918) was founder and first chairman of the Austrian Socialist Democratic Workers Party in 1888. Signed at close "S. Stepniak." Near Fine. 2. Dated November 6, 1890. 1pp, ca. 75 words, in blue ink. Declines a request from his publisher to undertake a book on the Jewish Question: ".it is impossible for me to write upon any question upon Jews or anything else, for I am quite full with preparing a series of American lectures." Signed at close, "S. Stepniak." Slight smudging final two lines and left margin, not affecting legibility. Very Good. 3. Dated May 15, 1893. 2pp, ca. 120 words, in black ink. Addressed to "Dear Mrs [i.e. messieurs] Sonnenschein," accepting an invitation to visit but stating he cannot arrive early. Signed at close "S. Stepniak." Light soil; Near FIne. Sergei Stepniak [aka Sergius; aka Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinskii, 1851-1895] made his revolutionary bones during the Narodnik Rebellion of 1877-78 by openly assassinating Nikolai Mezentsov, the head of the Czar's secret police, on the streets of St. Petersburg. Kravchinskii committed the act in broad daylight, and made no attempt to disavow his guilt, living publicly (if dangerously) for several months before finally escaping to Switzerland. He arrived in London around 1880 and quickly became the center of a lively Russian revolutionary exile scene. He founded the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom in 1891 and wrote a number of well-received books on revolutionary Russia, including Underground Russia (which had in fact been published in translation prior to his exile), The Russian Peasantry (1888); and a fictionalized account of his own exploits, The Career of a Nihilist (1889). He was killed, somewhat mysteriously we think, by an onrushing train in December of 1895, depriving him of any opportunity to witness the fruit of his labors in the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Dying young, Stepniak did not leave a great body of manuscript material behind him, and relatively few letters with good content have appeared in commerce.…