About Soviet Books

Hello,

My name is Philip Dion, I live in Vancouver, Canada, and yes, I collect Soviet Books.  Books published in the Soviet Union in English for export to the English speaking world.  I’ve been doing so for about ten years, and now have a collection I am proud to share with anyone who is interested enough to type ‘Soviet Books’ into the Google.  I started out stalking the shelves of thrift stores and neglected used book stores in any city I might visit.  Lately I’ve graduated to having booksellers buy collections for me knowing that I’ll buy them, and the occasional mass buy on Abebooks or Ebay.

Soviet books have a particular look that I have developed an instinct for, and I’m able to spot them on a crowded shelf of Sally Ann flotsam.  Some of these books have extraordinary cover designs, and a selection of these can be seen in the ‘design’ section of this blog.

My biggest triumph so far in this endeavour was completing my collection of Stalin’s Collected Works with original shipping boxes (number 11 is very hard to come by).

Another is the History of the Civil War int the USSR published by The Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, a large album that is memorable for the replica armband pasted in.

Here is a gallery of all scanned and photographed covers and dustjackets of my books.

I’m always on the lookout to add to my collection.  If you have any Soviet books that I don’t have in  my collection I’d like to know about them.  Please leave me a comment and we’ll talk.

Here are the Soviet publishers that published in English, these make up he bulk of my collection:

The Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, Moscow

These guys published books in smaller print runs early on in the history of the Soviet Union.  The editions are usually well made, with illustrations and nicely bound.  Some of the earlier books have a constuctivist aesthetic.

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Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow

The FLPH published was created to centralize all works bound for non  Soviet readers.  They published in all subjects, but specialized in politics and literature.  These editions are usually nicely bound and illustrated, often with eye-catching full colour dust jackets.

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Progress Publishers, Moscow

The FLPH became Progress sometime in the 1960s.  Their logo has the Sputnik satellite on one side, which is very cool.  On the other is the Russian letter ∏, for Progress.

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Raduga, Moscow

In the 1970s or 80s Progress gave up publishing literature to Raduga.  These books, too, are not of good quality.   Raduga published many of the classics of Russian Literature, and few contemporary novels.   Many children’s books were published under the Raduga imprint.

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Mir Publishers, Moscow

At the same time Raduga took over literature publishing from Progress, so too did Mir take on the sciences.  Mir published technical and scientific titles, as well as children’s science books, like the ‘A to Z of Cosmonautics’, a favorite of mine.

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Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow

Novosti published mainly pamphlets and small soft cover booklets.  The material for these came mainly from Soviet journalists.

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As well, Aurora Publishers, Leningrad, published Soviet art books, both contemporary and historical.  They did not have a groovy symbol I could post here.