book sale

The Slavic Language Department at the UW is having a small book sale. Among other things I found a copy of Russian For English Speaking Workers. A largeish image of the cover can be found here.

Published by the 'Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR' in 1933, this is such a wonderful example of Soviet propaganda that I can barely contain myself. This was written during the depth of the depression, when people still thought Communism might catch on over here. People were still emmigrating to Soviet Russia in order to further the revolution.

It's a very pretty book on the outside and smells wonderful. Unfortunately it smells wonderful because of the acid containing pages that are getting dangerously brittle. I cracked the edges of several pages before I started to handle it extra carefully. The binding is falling apart.

The typography isn't all that great, but I suppose the halting a project for ten years to invent a type-setting system is a very bougeousie thing to do.

xiadyn suggested I unbind it and scan everything, which is tempting. I could dump it all into a PDF. It's certainly a wonderful historical artifact that would be a shame to lose to the decay of non-archival quality paper.

The example sentances it uses include:

• My sister became a Communist.


• Imperialist states rob colonies.


• The bourgeoisie of all the world is the enemy of the Soviet Union.


• There are many battles ahead of us. Millions of proletarians will be victorious.


• In the second Five-Year Plan we shall complete the socialist reconstruction of agriculture.

As an exercise:

• Make a poster with slogans in Russian about the second Five-Year Plan.