Nikolsky V.K. Essay on Primitive Culture (Ocherk pervobytnoy kultury), 1923. In Russian

Никольский В.К.
Очерк первобытной культуры.
Москва-Петроград: Издательство Л.Д. Френкеля, 1923.
222 с., 1 л. ил.: ил.; 23 см. Издательская иллюстрированная обложка. Тираж 5000 экз. 
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Nikolsky V.K.
Essay on Primitive Culture (Ocherk pervobytnoy kultury).
Moscow-Petrograd: L.D. Frenkel Publishing House, 1923.
222 pp., 1 plate ill.: ill.; 23 cm. Publisher's illustrated cover. Print run 5,000 copies.

This is a rare first edition (1923) of a pioneering Soviet work on primitive society and culture by Vladimir Kapitonovich Nikolsky (1894–1953), a prominent Soviet historian and Doctor of Historical Sciences. One of the earliest systematic studies in Russian/Soviet scholarship on prehistory, the book explores the origins and development of primitive culture, including key issues of tribal/clan organization (rodoplemennoy stroy), social structures, material culture, art, technology, and the genesis of religion. Nikolsky, who shifted from 17th-century Russian history to prehistoric studies after the Revolution, draws on archaeological, ethnographic, and anthropological data available in the early 1920s, presenting an evolutionary Marxist-influenced perspective typical of the period. The volume includes numerous in-text illustrations and a separate plate. Published in the transitional Moscow-Petrograd era by the private Frenkel house (one of the last non-state publishers before full nationalization), this 222-page illustrated softcover in good condition is a significant artifact of early Soviet historical science, the formation of primitivist studies in the USSR, and 1920s academic publishing. Highly collectible for specialists in history of anthropology, prehistoric archaeology, Soviet Marxism in social sciences, early 20th-century Russian ethnography, and rare pre-Stalinist historical monographs.