Description

8°. 53 pp., reverse collation, [1] title page in Latin script, back wrappers with printed title, recent cloth binding with embossed decoration and gilt lettering on the cover and spine (slightly stained and water stained, back title page with old price stamp and tiny loss of paper in margins, a v-shaped tear on the back title page, a small tear in the inner side of the title page).

 
An unusual translation of Leon Trotsky’s text on Russia was published in Berlin in Ottoman script. The titles on the back (western front) are in Latin script. The book was first published in 1928 under the title The Real Situation in Russia in New York by Harcourt, Brace and Co. This Turkish version was according to the subtitle translated from German.  

Trotsky was exiled to Istanbul in February 1929, where he lived until April closely supervised by the Turkish government. After that he was moved to the Turkish island Büyükada in the Sea of Marmara.  

The Turkish translation was probably made for Trotsky’s sympathisers in Turkey and abroad, as his works could not be printed in Istanbul. Instead of the modern Latin script, which was at the time already obligatory in Turkey, here still the Ottoman script was used, which would still be more recognised by the Ottoman émigrés all over the world, but also understood by a large population of the former Ottoman Empire from Bosnia on the north, south part of the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa.  

Worldcat lists four examples in libraries worldwide (Boğaziçi University Library, McGill University Library, University of California Los Angeles, and University of California, Los Angeles).

References: OCLC 62463497.