Levchenko, M. V. The History of Byzantium: A Short Outline (Istoriya Vizantii: kratkiy ocherk) / edited by O. L. Vainshtein. First edition, 1940. In Russian.

евченко, М. В. История Византии. Краткий очерк. Ответственный редактор О. Л. Вайнштейн.
Первое издание.
М.; Л.: ОГИЗ, Соцэкгиз, 1940. 264 с., 1 л. складной карты; обычный формат.
Твёрдый издательский переплёт, переплёт, титул, заставки и концовки работы художника А. Ушина. Тираж 20 000 экз.
Владельческая подпись и дата чернилами на титульном листе.
Переплёт очень хороший: лёгкие потёртости корешка и углов, пятна на задней крышке. Блок очень хороший: страницы чистые, складная карта цела.
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Levchenko, M. V. The History of Byzantium: A Short Outline. Edited by O. L. Vainshtein.
First edition.
Moscow; Leningrad: OGIZ, Sotsekgiz, 1940. 264 pp., 1 folding map; standard format.
Hardcover, binding, title page, headpieces and tailpieces by the artist A. Ushin. Print run 20,000 copies.
Owner's ink signature and date on the title page.
Binding very good: light rubbing to spine and corners, stains on the back board. Text block very good: clean pages, folding map intact.

Mitrofan Vasilyevich Levchenko (1890-1955) was a Leningrad Byzantinist who received his doctorate in 1940 and headed the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1940 to 1944. This short outline, issued by OGIZ-Sotsekgiz in the year of his doctorate, was presented by the publisher as the first systematic Marxist account of the internal history of Byzantium, from the last decades of the Roman Empire to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Its eight chapters follow the formation of the East Roman state, the age of Justinian, the crisis of the seventh century, the iconoclast movement, the Macedonian dynasty, the Crusades, the Latin and Nicaean empires, the Zealot movement and the Palaiologan period, and are supplemented by a folding map of the empire in the sixth and seventh centuries. The author also considers Russo-Byzantine relations and Byzantine influence on the early cultures of the peoples of the USSR, a theme he later developed in his 1956 study of Russo-Byzantine relations. Designed as a university textbook, the volume was printed in 20,000 copies and bound in publisher's cloth to a design by the artist A. Ushin. As a document of Stalin-era historiography, which opens by criticizing the work of pre-revolutionary Russian Byzantinists, it is of interest to historians of the discipline and to collectors of Soviet scholarly publishing and Byzantine studies.