Preobrazhensky, P. F. Course of Ethnology (Kurs etnologii). First edition, 1929. In Russian.

Преображенский, П. Ф. Курс этнологии. Первое издание.
Москва — Ленинград : Государственное издательство (Госиздат), 1929. 214 с.
Твердый издательский переплет (картонаж с тканевым корешком). Обычный формат. Малотиражное издание (Тираж 3 000 экз.).
Состояние хорошее: естественные потертости, потемнение корешка и износ уголков переплета, характерные для картонажных изданий 1920-х годов. Книжный блок крепкий, страницы чистые.
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Preobrazhensky, P. F. Course of Ethnology. First edition.
Moscow – Leningrad : Gosizdat (State Publishing House), 1929. 214 pp.
Original publisher's half-cloth boards. Regular format. Limited print run of 3,000 copies.
Condition good: natural rubbing, darkening to the spine, and edge wear to the boards typical for 1920s cartonnage. The text block is firm and internally clean.

A highly significant and exceptionally rare artifact of repressed Soviet science. Pyotr Frantsevich Preobrazhensky (1894–1941) was a brilliant Soviet historian, ethnologist, and professor at Moscow State University. His "Course of Ethnology," published in 1929, was a major theoretical work outlining the history and methodologies of the discipline. However, the book's rarity today is directly tied to the author's tragic fate. Preobrazhensky became a victim of Stalin's Great Purges; he was arrested in 1937 on fabricated charges of anti-Soviet activity and was eventually executed in 1941. Following his arrest, his name was erased from academic discourse, and his books were systematically removed from public libraries and destroyed by Glavlit (the Soviet censorship organ). The author's afterword in this volume is particularly poignant, as he defends his theoretical positions against other emerging Soviet dogmas (such as Nikolai Marr's Japhetic theory), highlighting the dangerous intellectual climate of the era. Given the initial small print run of 3,000 copies and the deliberate state-sponsored destruction of his works in the late 1930s, surviving copies of this textbook are profound bibliographical rarities.