Proletarskaia Revoliutsiia i Renegat Kautskii [The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky]

N.p. [New York]: Tsentrispolkoma R.F.K.P.A., 1920. First American Edition. Octavo (23cm). Publisher's pebbled brown cloth, stamped in gilt on spine and front cover; 144pp. Mild external wear; triangular loss to leaf 107/108, resulting in brief loss to text (not affecting sense); Very Good. A key post-revolutionary essay by Lenin, attacking Kautsky and the Mensheviks for holding a reactionary and counterrevolutionary line, specifically for the positions articulated in Kautsky's essay "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat," published in Vienna in 1918. This is the first title issued under the imprint of the R.F.K.P.A., the publishing arm of Regarding the American publishing history of this title, we quote the Swedish auction house Stockholms Auktionswerk:

"This edition was printed in an edition of about 1,000 copies and distributed by Max Maisel (a Russian born book dealer, who specialized in Russian radical literature; he was also the first publisher of Karl Marx in the USA). Maisel was not able to sell too many copies of the book, and almost the entire run was kept in his warehouse up to the early 1950's. After the death of Maisel the entire stock of his company was sold to a prominent Russian bookdealer Nicholas Martianoff, a former associate and one time secretary of Kerensky. Martianoff considered all radical literature held at Maisel's shop wothless and sent it to a paper mill in New York." [http://auktionsverket.com/auction/rare-books/2015-06-16/6257-rare-edition-of-lenin-s-pamphlet-on-kautsky-1920/]

The book is thus something of a Lenin rarity, at least in commerce (we note only one copy at auction -- at the above- referenced Stockholm house -- and none others currently offered in the trade); this is the only copy we have seen or handled. English and Finnish editions appeared in the U.S. the same year, with priority uncertain.