ALITET GOES TO THE HILLS: Winner of the Stalin Prize

This is the second edition of this book; the first was in Russian. This is the first English edition. It's an interesting piece of post-WWII Soviet history. It was published in 1947 by the The Foreign Languages Publishing House, a state-run publisher in the Soviet Union that published Russian literature,novels, propaganda, and books about the USSR in foreign languages, including works by Lenin and Stalin. It was disbanded in 1964. The Story: I can't say what the story is about; there are no summaries available. The few online reviews say that it's "exciting and well-written", that it provides very good historical and culture insight, and that the illustrations are ethnographically correct.

Its context is that the Soviets had just abolished forced marriage and bride pricing, and made waged labour more attractive (between the war and Stalin's purges, the workforce had lost its enthusiasm). This novel was apparently intended to be, and succeeding in being, encouraging to workers throughout the USSR, hence the Stalin Prize. I can't find any information about the author, Tikhon Syomushki. However, the book was designed and illustrated by Evgenii Goliakhovsky (1902-1971), who usually spelled his name 'Yevgney', and who is very well-known today, in illustration-collection circles. This book was beautifully produced, with no expense spared. The covers are very heavy, with a thick leather binding. A design is etched into the front cover and spine in pale green. On the spine, the title is again in pale green and the author's name is in black and gold. Inside, they've used beautiful paper and there are many black and white illustrations, and full-page lithographs. It has not been read; the spine has not been cracked and it's in pristine condition. The pages are much whiter than they appear in these images. 595 Pages, 6" x 8"