Kogan, M. S. Essays on the History of Chess in the USSR (Ocherki po istorii shakhmat v SSSR), 1938. In Russian.

Коган, М. С. Очерки по истории шахмат в СССР.
Москва — Ленинград: Государственное издательство «Физкультура и спорт» (ФиС), 1938.
392 с., с историческими рисунками и фотографиями ; 20 х 14 см.
Издательский коленкоровый переплет светло-коричневого цвета с черно-бронзовым тиснением: на верхней крышке — декоративный картуш с заглавием в орнаментальной рамке, на корешке — шрифтовая композиция и виньетки.
Состояние: переплет в хорошей сохранности, коленкор слегка потерт по краям, верх и низ корешка и уголки незначительно потерты; внутренний блок крепкий, бумага равномерно пожелтела, текст и иллюстрации полные и чистые.
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Kogan, M. S. Essays on the History of Chess in the USSR.
Moscow — Leningrad: State Publishing House "Fizkul'tura i Sport" (Physical Culture and Sport), 1938.
392 pp., with historical illustrations and photographic plates ; 20 x 14 cm.
Publisher's tan cloth binding with black and gilt-bronze stamping: front board with a decorative title cartouche in an ornamental frame, spine with title and decorative vignettes.
Condition: Binding in good preserved state, cloth lightly rubbed at edges, head and tail of spine and corners slightly worn; text block firm, paper evenly age-toned, text and illustrations complete and clean.
Mikhail Solomonovich Kogan (1898–1942) was a Soviet chess historian and journalist who established himself in the 1920s and 1930s as the principal researcher of the Russian and Soviet chess past. His "Ocherki po istorii shakhmat v SSSR" ("Essays on the History of Chess in the USSR"), published in Moscow and Leningrad in 1938 by the state publishing house Fizkul'tura i Sport, is the most ambitious and comprehensive single-volume narrative history of Russian chess produced in the pre-war Soviet period. The book traces the game's penetration into Kievan Rus, its place as the "tsar's game" of seventeenth-century Muscovy, its role under serfdom, the rise of organized chess life in the Russian Empire from the second half of the nineteenth century, the first all-Russian and international tournaments held on Russian soil, and the careers of the first Russian champions and their celebrated games. Of particular cultural-historical interest are the chapters devoted to chess imagery in the byliny epic cycle and in Russian folklore, and to the place of the game in the lives of major Russian writers, scholars, and public figures — Pushkin, Turgenev, Lev Tolstoy, Mendeleev, Lenin, and others. The volume is generously illustrated with historical engravings, portraits, and photographs of champions and major events, and accompanied by extensive historical and bibliographical notes. The book belongs to the wave of late-1930s Soviet historiography that sought to establish Russian primacy in every field of science and culture; it remains, however, a thoroughly researched and still genuinely useful primary survey of Russian chess history, and is one of the foundational texts of Soviet chess literature. Kogan himself perished during the Siege of Leningrad in 1942, and this volume is regarded as the most important monograph from his pen.