Turgenev, Ivan Sergeevich

Pervaia liubov [First love]

[Munich]: Mednyi vsadnik, 1947. DP edition. Original cover. Item #294

Small octavo (15 x 11 cm). 117 pages. Text in Russian. With the "Approved by UNRRA TEAM 108" note and the bookseller's stamp on the back cover. Some wear and chipping to cover and text block. OCLC locates only three physical copies as of December 2022.

A rare edition of Turgenev's one of the most famous pieces of short fiction published by Russian Displaced Persons (DPs) in Germany in the aftermath of World War II. It tells the love story between a 21-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy.

Displaced persons (DP) camps in Europe after World War II were established in Germany, Austria, and Italy, primarily for refugees from Eastern Europe and former prisoners of Nazi German concentration camps. Two years after the end of World War II in Europe, about 850,000 people lived in DP camps, including Armenians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Yugoslavs, Jews, Greeks, Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, and Czechoslovaks. The Allies classified the refugees as "displaced persons" (DPs) and made the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) responsible for their care.

Over fifty Russian émigré publishing houses were founded in the DP camps. Such publications are essential historical materials describing the post-war events from the point of view of the representatives of the "second wave" of the Russian emigration.

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