[THE FIRST RECORDED RUSSIAN-LANGUAGE EDITION OF THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO PRINTED IN GEORGIA] Коммунистическій манифестъ / Kommunisticheskiy manifest [i.e., The Communist manifesto]. Translated from the German by G. B. Taubman

MARX, KARL (1818-1883) & ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1820-1895).

Tbilisi [Tiflis]: Izdanie gazety “Kavkazskiy Rabochiy” [i.e., Published by the newspaper The Caucasian Worker], [1917].

Complete title: [THE FIRST RECORDED RUSSIAN-LANGUAGE EDITION OF THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO PRINTED IN GEORGIA - FROM REVOLUTIONARY TBILISI TO RUSSIAN-OCCUPIED ERZURUM] Коммунистическій манифестъ / Kommunisticheskiy manifest [i.e., The Communist manifesto]. Translated from the German by G. B. Taubman.

Original publisher’s red printed wrappers. Cr. 8vo. (20 × 13.9 cm). In Russian. 36 p. Tear to spine; wrappers and text age-toned. Contemporary oval bookseller’s stamp to the first page. Overall, a very good copy.

The very rare Tbilisi edition of the Communist Manifesto, apparently the first Russian-language edition printed in Georgia and, as far as we can trace, the earliest Russian-language printing of the work in the Caucasus. The present copy bears a contemporary stamp of the “Prosveshchenie” book and stationery business in Russian-occupied Erzurum.

Translated directly from the German by G. B. Taubman, the present edition was issued by Kavkazskiy Rabochiy [i.e., The Caucasian Worker], the Bolshevik newspaper established in Tbilisi in March 1917. The paper was published until December of that year, and its printing press was destroyed in February 1918. The pamphlet thus belongs to the short period of Bolshevik publishing activity in Tbilisi during the revolutionary year of 1917. In addition to the text of the Manifesto, the edition contains Russian translations of Marx and Engels’s preface to the German edition of 1872 and Engels’s prefaces to the editions of 1883 and 1890. The form of the Russian title follows that used in the St Petersburg edition of 1906 and the Vladivostok edition of 1917.

The first Russian translation of the Communist Manifesto, by Mikhail Bakunin, was published in Geneva in 1869. Russian editions subsequently appeared in several forms and under variant titles. In the Caucasus, the first complete Georgian translation was printed in Tbilisi in 1905. No Russian-language edition printed in Georgia or elsewhere in the Caucasus before the present edition has been traced.

Of particular importance is the contemporary oval stamp on the first page: КНИЖНАЯ И ПИСЧЕ-БУМАЖНАЯ ТОРГОВЛЯ

ЭРЗЕРУМЪ - "ПРОСВѢЩЕНІЕ" [i.e., "Illumination" Book and Stationery Trade, Erzurum]. The full wording of the stamp identifies Prosveshchenie as a bookseller and stationery business, rather than a private owner or institutional library. It is in pre-reform Russian orthography, retaining both the terminal hard sign in Эрзерумъ and the letter yat in Просвѣщеніе.

The Russian Caucasus Army had captured Erzurum in February 1916 and was subsequently incorporated into the temporary Russian military administration of the occupied Ottoman territories. The city remained a major military and administrative centre of the Caucasian Front during 1917. A Russian-language political and military press also operated there, including Kavkazskiy Voin, the organ of the Army Committee of the Caucasian Army.

The Prosveshchenie stamp provides direct evidence for the circulation of this Tbilisi printing into Russian-occupied Ottoman territory shortly after publication. The chronology is unusually narrow: the pamphlet was printed in 1917, while Russian authority in Erzurum disintegrated during the winter of 1917-18, before the Ottoman recapture of the city in March 1918. The present copy can therefore be placed in Erzurum probably in 1917 or early 1918. The book was thus part of a notable geographical circulation across the Russian Caucasus and the Russian-occupied Ottoman territories at the time of its publication.

The Russian State Library records a copy under Tiflis, Kavkazskiy Rabochiy, [191-], 36 pp. One further copy has been traced in the antiquarian trade. No earlier Russian-language edition of the Communist Manifesto printed in Georgia or elsewhere in the Caucasus has been traced.

Provenance: "Prosveshchenie", Book and Stationery Trade, Erzurum, Russian-occupied Ottoman Empire, c. 1917-early 1918 (contemporary oval stamp). Acquired from a Tbilisi bookseller in August 2026.

Reference: Russian State Library, 01008374969; apparently unrecorded in WorldCat.