Desyat’ mesjyatsev (Ten Months) [Memoirs of the Russian Civil War, 1918-19]

Near fine condition; repaired fragments of the spine, several soft creases across cover corners, wrappers shows some foxing, rubbing marks and old bookstore stamp on the back wrapper; internally few ocassional foxing spots and fingerprints mainly on the bottom outer corners of the pages. 

This book by Lev Fridland is based on his memories of the events that were happening during the years of Civir War in Russia, namely since the end of 1917 until the middle of 1919. Fridland had no political sympathies, he was far from the class struggle and the commitment of any ideology. He was a doctor, a very good and diligent doctor, for whom patients were not divided into „whites“ adn „reds“. But the time when he lived, and the place where he lived had pulled him into a deperate cycle... He was sent to the military hostipal in Nizhne-Chirskaia, located on the Upper Don. He remained there after the White retreat to treat many wounded left behind who could not be evacuated. Under the Reds, Fridland remained head of the same military hospital, where he saved the lives of numerous wounded officers. When the Whites retook the town he was arrested and sentenced to death. His sentence was reduced to four years of hard labour thanks to a petition by Cossack officers whom Fridland had hidden from the Reds. The doctor was sent to the Novocherkassk prison, where he was eventually freed by the Red Army. 

Today Fridland's book is a bibliographic rarity. Although, it was republished in 1958 and 1966 under the title "Nachalo mira : Iz proshlogo" (The Beginning of the World : From the Past), the new version of Fridland's memoirs was heavily censored, and even in the shortened and redacted form, it was also withdrawn from the libraries. The current, an original version is decorated with striking avant-garde cover by an unattributed artist.