[Ernesto Che Guevara]

Moscow, 1972. First Edition. Octavo. Cloth-backed pictorial paper-covered boards; 348, (3)pp; portraits, plates. Slight external rubbing and shelfwear; corners nudged; still a solid, Very Good copy. Apparently the first full-length Soviet biography of the Argentinian revolutionary martyr and hero of the Cuban Revolution, well-illustrated with photographic portraits and plates.

According to Costa Rican investigative journalist Marjorie Ross, "Lavretsky" was a pseudonym for Soviet master-spy Iosif Grigulevich, who got his start as a hired hit-man against Trotskyist and Anarchist factions in the Spanish Civil War. She pegs him as the never-identied "third man" in the assassination of Leon Trotsky; and during the Cold War, posing as an international coffee expert, Grigulevich reputedly penetrated the highest levels of government and culture in Costa Rica, Chile, and Mexico, during which time he was also the Kremlin's "handler" for Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and Mexican painter José Siqueiros (see Marjorie Ross, El secreto encanto de la KGB/ The Secret Charm of the KGB: Las cinco vidas de Iosif Grigulievich/ The Five Lives of Iosif Grigulevich. San José: 2006).

Apparently an uncommon work, at least in Western institutions; OCLC locates just one copy (British Library); KVK and European Library Meta Catalog find three more (Nat. Lib. Lithuania; BNF; Staatsbibliothek Berlin).