MIRAYEV, Miraev. D. [Mikhail Gorlin and Raisa Bloch Blokh]

Not dated, presumed early 1930s. A very good bright copy in original colour decorated card covers. Landscape format. Illustrated throughout in b/w and colour. Text in Russian. Illustrator unknown. Used; Very Good Raisa Bloch, sister of Yaakov or Jacob Bloch, the owner of the Petropolis publishing house settled in Berlin when Petropolis moved there from Petersburg in 1922. Due to the rise of the NSDAP, Raisa and her lover Mikhail Gorlin moved to Paris in 1933 while Petropolis moved to Brussels. Publishing, however, continued in Berlin under the Petropolis name until 1938. Eventually, however, Gorlin (by then Raisa's husband) perished in a Silesian salt-mine in 1941 and Raisa in Ravensbruck in 1943. This book is undated but probably published before Bloch and Gorlin left for Paris in 1933. "... we (Bloch and Gorlin) created... another two children's books (this time in our native tongue)" Raisa wrote in 1931. See Lapidus. The seemingly innocuous children's story depicts a goose-stepping little boy and a sad little girl having to move to another home.