Pushkin, Aleksandr. The Stationmaster (Stantsionnyy smotritel / Станционный смотритель). Illustrated by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, 1936. In Russian.

Пушкин, Александр Сергеевич. Станционный смотритель / рисунки М. Добужинского. Фронтиспис гравюра А. Суворова.
Серия: Пушкинская библиотека (Избранные произведения великого русского поэта Александра Сергеевича Пушкина).
Москва - Ленинград : Издательство детской литературы ЦК ВЛКСМ (Детиздат), 1936. 30 страниц.
Мягкая бумажная обложка. Уменьшенный формат. Тираж 300 000 экземпляров.
Ответственный редактор К. Пискунов, художественный редактор В. Пахомов.
Состояние хорошее. Равномерное возрастное пожелтение бумаги, незначительные потертости корешка и краев обложки. Книжный блок крепкий, страницы чистые.
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Pushkin, Alexander Sergeevich. The Stationmaster (Stantsionnyy smotritel) / illustrations by M. Dobuzhinsky. Frontispiece engraving by A. Suvorov.
Series: Pushkin Library (Selected works of the great Russian poet Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin).
Moscow - Leningrad : Children's Literature Publishing House of the Central Committee of the Komsomol (Detizdat), 1936. 30 pages.
Paper wrappers. Reduced (pocket) format. Print run of 300,000 copies.
Executive editor K. Piskunov, art editor V. Pakhomov.
Condition good. Even age-toning to the paper, minor wear to the spine and edges of the wrappers. The text block is firm, and the pages are clean.

A notable pre-WWII Soviet pocket-sized edition of Alexander Pushkin's classic short story "The Stationmaster" (Stantsionnyy smotritel), published by Detizdat in 1936. This publication was issued as the eleventh installment of the mass-market "Pushkin Library" series, designed to popularize classical Russian literature leading up to the grand 1937 Pushkin Centennial, a major state-sponsored cultural campaign across the USSR. The story itself is a masterpiece of nineteenth-century Russian prose, fundamentally shaping the "little man" theme in Russian literature as part of The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin. The defining artistic and collectible value of this specific booklet lies in its reproduction of the brilliant graphic illustrations by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, a prominent member of the Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) movement. Dobuzhinsky's evocative silhouettes and atmospheric drawings perfectly capture the tragic and poignant essence of Pushkin's narrative. From a bibliographical perspective, this 1936 printing is a later Soviet mass edition, as Dobuzhinsky originally created these famous illustrations much earlier, in 1905. Despite its massive original print run of 300,000 copies, fragile softcover pocket editions from the 1930s suffered incredibly low survival rates due to heavy everyday handling and the extreme scarcity of paper during the subsequent war years. Finding a surviving copy that preserves its original illustrated paper wrappers and a tight text block is uncommon, making this an appealing acquisition for collectors of Soviet book design, Pushkiniana, and classic Russian graphic arts.