BOOK A 20.5 x 15.3cm typed "samizdat" collection of poems by the Russian Symbolist writer Maksimilian Voloshin entitled "Izbrannoe" [Favourites]. Bound into flexible boards covered with contemporary decorative cloth, 8vo, c. 1960s. A few annotations and corrections in the text, which is clean and crisp. Works like the present lot were secretly written, copied and spread in the Soviet Union. They started to appear shortly after Stalin's death in 1953 and they became the major form of criticism towards the restrictions imposed by the regime. Since the dissident authors had to avoid the government's strict control over published works, samizdat publications were often carbon copies of typewritten sheets and were passed by hand from reader to reader. Although Voloshin died in the thirties, he was possibly of some influence on dissident elements in the Soviet Union who tried to preserve something of the pre-revolutionary culture.