FIRST BULGARIAN EDITION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ABRIDGED VERSION OF "THE CAPITAL"

MARX, KARL (+) GABRIEL DEVILLE (+) [TRANSLATOR:] CHRISTIAN RAKOVSKY (+) ED. BERNSTEIN (+) GEORGI PLEKHANOV

Kapitalutu. [i.e. Bulgarian "Das Kapital"] [Bound with]: Predpostavkit na sotsializma i zadachitu na sotsialnata demokratsiya [i.e. Bulgarian: "The Preconditions of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy"] (+) Marksovata Istoricheska Teoria [i.e. Bulgarian "Marx's Historical Theory"].

Varna, 1900.

8vo. In contemporary half calf with four raised bands to spine. Extremities with wear. Frontboard missing parts of cloth. Two bands on spine missing some of the leather. Verso of front free end paper with notes in contemporary hand and previous owner's name to title-page of all three works. A few occassional marginal lignings in pencil, otherwise internally good and clean. [Predpostavkit na sotsializma i zadachitu...:] XII, 257, (1), XIV pp. [Marksovata Istoricheska Teoria:] 86, (2) pp. [Kapitalutu:] IV, (5)-284 pp.

The exceedingly scarce first Bulgarian edition of the most important abridged version of Marx's Capital ever to have appeared, published five years before the first partial translation and whole 9 years before the first full Bulgarian translation. Translator Christian Rakovsky later became head of Soviet Ukraine and leader of the left opposition in the Soviet Union after 1928 was one of Trotsky's few intimate friends.

"The epitome, here translated, was published in Paris, in 1883, by Gabriel Deville, possibly the most brilliant writer among the French Marxians. It is the most successful attempt yet made to popularize Marx's scientific economics. It is by no means free from difficulties, for the subject is essentially a complex and difficult subject, but there are no difficulties that reasonable attention and patience will not enable the average reader to overcome.

There is no attempt at originality. The very words in most cases are Marx's own words, and Capital is followed so closely that the first twenty-five chapters correspond in subject and treatment with the first twenty-five chapters of Capital. Chapter XXVI corresponds in the main with Chapter XXVI of Capital, but also contains portions of chapter XXX. The last three chapters-XXVII, XXVIII, and XXIX-correspond to the last three chapters-XXXI, XXXII, and XXXIII-of Capital." (ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE, Intruductory Note to the 1899 English translation).

Translator Christian Rakovsky dominated the socialist movement in the Balkans during the two decades before the first world war and was probably the most influential character in spread of socialism in Europe. Trotsky wrote of him: " Ch.G. Rakovsky is, internationally, one of the best known figures in the European Socialist movement" and G.D.H. Cole wrote in The Second International "No other Socialist spans the Balkans in the same way as Rakovsky, nor is there any of comparable importance."

In 1913 Rakovsky was an organizer and leader of the Rumanian Socialist Party, which later joined the Communist International. The party was showing considerable growth. Rakovsky edited a daily paper, which he financed as well.

"He received his initial education at Kotel. At the age of fourteen in a period when (as he says in his Autobiography in this volume) "even the youngest students were passionately interested in politics", he was excluded from all Bulgarian schools after organizing a school riot which it took a company of soldiers to suppress. After a year in his father's house, "reading indiscriminately everything that came to hand", he was readmitted to school, only to be expelled again after a year, this time for good. The occasion this time was his collaboration with his friend and mentor, E. Dabev, one of the veterans of the Bulgarian revolutionary movement. Dabev (1864-1946) edited the first marxist weekly in Bulgaria in 1886. He published in it Marx's Wage Labour and Capital. In 1890, already a marxist, Rakovsky aided Dabev in preparing the publication of Engels's Development of Scientific Socialism, in particular in adapting Vera Zasulich's introduction to Bulgarian conditions. In this final year in school Rakovsky also produced with a friend a clandestine newspaper called Zerkalo ("Mirror"), which his Autobiography describes as having "something of everything: Rousseau's educational ideas, the struggle between rich and poor, the misdeeds of teachers, etc. ..." He was now seventeen years old. That same year he left Bulgaria to study medicine in Geneva."

In Geneva in 1892 Rakovsky began to edit and publish the Bulgarian journal Social Democrat which, not only in its title but also in its contents, resembled the Russian journal. Jointly with his companion Savva Balabanov, and with the active collaboration of Plekhanov, Rakovsky continued the journal for two years. Social Democrat grouped around itself in Bulgaria the supporters of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Union. This group opposed itself to the Bulgarian Social Democratic Party founded in 1891 by Dimitar Blagoev who led the left wing of the movement and later, in 1919, the Bulgarian Communist Party and made the full translation of Das Kapital in 1909. (Fagan, Biographical Introduction to Christian Rakovsky).

OCLC list no copies.

Order-nr.: 57116