Boronina, E. A. The Ink Blot (Chernil'noe Pyatno): A Story for Elementary School. Ill. by V. Petrova; cover by A. Pakhomov, 1949. In Russian.

Боронина, Е. А. Чернильное пятно : рассказ для начальной школы / Е. А. Боронина ; рис. В. Петровой ; обложка А. Пахомова.
Серия: Школьная библиотека.
Москва ; Ленинград : Государственное издательство детской литературы Министерства просвещения РСФСР, 1949 (2-я фабрика детской книги Детгиза, Ленинград). 20 с. : ил. ; 20 см.
Тираж 200 000 экз. Цена 20 коп.
Мягкая издательская обложка.
Состояние очень хорошее: обложка с небольшими потёртостями. Блок чистый, полный.
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Boronina, E. A. The Ink Blot: A Story for Elementary School / by E. A. Boronina ; illustrations by V. Petrova ; cover by A. Pakhomov.
Series: School Library.
Moscow; Leningrad: State Publishing House for Children's Literature, Ministry of Education of the RSFSR, 1949 (Second Children's Book Factory of Detgiz, Leningrad). 20 pp., illustrated ; 20 cm.
Print run of 200,000 copies. Original price 20 kopecks.
Soft publisher's wrapper.
Condition: very good.

A slim postwar Detgiz reader for elementary-school pupils, part of the "School Library" series, telling the story of Sasha, a Soviet schoolboy who befriends a quiet new classmate, Igor Smelov, an accomplished builder of model aircraft. Sasha and his classmates learn that Igor and his sister spent four years in a children's home after their mother died in Leningrad during the Blockade and their father was lost at the front; the narrative follows Sasha's private guilt over an unnamed unkindness toward his new friend, resolved through confession and small acts of restitution - giving Igor his own new boots, helping his own mother carry firewood - the ink blot of the title standing for the stain of conscience the boy finally allows to lift. The author, Ekaterina Alekseevna Boronina (1907-1955), was herself a survivor of the Leningrad Blockade and a member of the Leningrad Writers' Union; the following year, in October 1950, she was arrested as a "repeat offender" over a 1926 anarchist-circle conviction from her student years and sentenced by the MGB Special Council to ten years in the camps, returning an invalid in 1954 and dying the following year - a biography that lends the book's themes of confession, guilt, and quiet endurance an unintended personal resonance. The cover was designed by Alexei Fyodorovich Pakhomov (1900-1973), one of the most important Soviet graphic artists of the twentieth century, a pioneer of Soviet children's book illustration alongside Vladimir Lebedev, later People's Artist of the USSR and full member of the Academy of Arts, best known for his wartime lithograph cycle "Leningrad During the Blockade" - making him a particularly fitting choice for a story centered on a Blockade orphan. Issued in a very large print run of 200,000 copies at the standard price of 20 kopecks, the booklet was intended for mass classroom distribution rather than the collector's shelf, and well-preserved copies with an intact wrapper are correspondingly modest survivors of Soviet school publishing.