Goltsev, Viktor. Shota Rustaveli and His Poem (Shota Rustaveli i ego poema). Artist V. Reznikov, 1940. In Russian.

Гольцев, Виктор. Шота Руставели и его поэма
Ответственный редактор С. Каухчишвили. Художник В. Резников.
Москва: Советский писатель, 1940. 158 страниц.
Издательский твёрдый переплёт в ткани с золотым тиснением, формат 12,5 × 17 см, тираж 5000 экземпляров. Вложен листок с исправлением опечаток.
Состояние: переплёт хорошее, ткань слегка растрёпана у головки и хвоста корешка. Блок хорошее+, бумага равномерно тонирована, страницы чистые, без пометок и штампов.
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Goltsev, Viktor. Shota Rustaveli and His Poem
Edited by S. Kaukhchishvili. Artist V. Reznikov.
Moscow: Soviet Writer, 1940. 158 pages.
Publisher's hardcover in cloth with gilt lettering, 12.5 × 17 cm, edition of 5,000 copies. A loose errata slip is laid in.
Condition: binding good, the cloth slightly frayed at the head and tail of the spine. Text block good plus, the paper evenly toned, pages clean, with no markings or stamps.

A short Soviet introduction to the life and poem of Shota Rustaveli, written by the literary critic Viktor Goltsev and published in Moscow by Soviet Writer in 1940. In his foreword the author states that, despite a considerable Georgian literature on Rustaveli and many articles for the Rustaveli jubilee, no Marxist book on the poet existed in Russian, and that his small volume is not a scholarly study but an introduction meant to systematize what is known and to identify the main features of the poem. The seven chapters move from the scant documentary traces of the poet ("a certain gentleman named Rustaveli") through the age of Queen Tamar and the problem of the poet's biography to the social and political struggle shown in the poem, its humanism, its treatment of heroism, love and friendship, and finally its craftsmanship and popular character. The text belongs to the Soviet reception of Rustaveli of the late 1930s, when the national poet of Georgia was interpreted in the terms of the official cultural policy of the period, and it is a useful document of how that reading was presented to a Russian audience. The book was handed to production in August 1939, signed to press in March 1940 and printed in an edition of 5,000 copies. The editor was S. Kaukhchishvili and the artist V. Reznikov. For collectors of Georgian studies, Rustaveli literature and Soviet literary criticism, it is a compact, period-bound witness of that interpretation.