[DPs / BUENOS AIRES IMPRINT] Ди-Пи в Италии / Di-Pi v Italii: Zapiski prodavtsa kukol = [Di-pi en Italia: Notas del vendedor de las muňecas]

SHIRIAEV, BORIS [NIKOLAYEVICH] (A. ALIMOV) (1889-1959)

Imprenta "Dorrego", Buenos Aires, 1952.

Original pictorial wrappers. Demy 8vo. (21 x 14 cm). In Russian. 269, [2] p., photographic b/w plates on [8] unnumbered pages. Slight wear to lower spine, slight folding on extremities, light foxing. Overall, a very good copy.

First edition of this scarce first book of Shiryaev including memoirs of his time in the Capua Refugee Camp in Northern Italy after World War II, where he died as a Displaced Person. This book was published in Buenos Aires with the assistance of Ivan Lukyanovich Solonevich's associate, a member of the White movement like Shiryaev during the Russian Civil War (1917-1923) and later of the anti-Soviet underground in Ukraine, spent the rest of his life in emigration, first in Finland, then Bulgaria, Germany, Argentine (where he founded the newspaper Nasha Strana, Our Country) and Uruguay.

“D.P.” in the title comes from the abbreviation of DPs, Displaced persons, so dubbed in the West after the Second World War, millions of refugees who tried, often unsuccessfully, to find refuge from Stalin's secret police. In Italy, Boris Shiryaev actively wrote fiction and literary articles, published in the Russian magazines "Rebirth" and "The Edge."

“Before the Second World War, Shiryaev snatches back to teaching and lecturing in the provincial universities, on the eve of the outbreak of the war, he taught the history of Russian literature at the Stavropol Pedagogical Institute. After the occupation of Stavropol German and Romanian troops (on 3 August 1942) and the closure of the Institute headed by Boris Shiryaev, the newspaper "Stavropol Word" first issue in the amount of four pages came a week after the arrival of the Germans. It was anti-Soviet, but the German censorship in it was subject only to a summary of news from the front. Four months later, the newspaper was renamed the "Morning of the Caucasus” and has spread across the North Caucasus region. At the approach to the city of the Soviet troops, Shiryaev left Stavropol with the Germans. In May 1943, he attended school in Dabendorf ROA (at Berlin). Boris Shiryaev was the captain of the RAF, and worked with the rules issued in Crimea's fascist newspaper "Voice of the Crimea." In June 1943, in Simferopol, he obtained from the German High Command an awarded Hitler insignia established for distinguishing himself in the fight against Bolshevism. The "unquenchable oil lamp" is present as an indirect criticism of the Russian Liberation Army, and its chief Andrey Vlasov probably in 1944 Shiryaev was somehow involved in the Cossack camp, in the magazine "The Cossack Guard" and ideological design Cossack movement from 1943 to 1945, which participated in the fighting on the side of the Wehrmacht, first in Poland, then in Northern Italy. In February 1945, Shiryaev was sent to Northern Italy for founding the new Russian publication.” (Wikipedia).

As of January 2024, we could find only one copy in the OCLC (162250457), in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.