[Legends and True Tales: Stories of the Altai Craftsmen]. Legendy i Byli: Skazaniia altaiskikh masterovykh. 

Notes, article, and commentary by A. Misurev.
Preface by M. Azadovsky.

Novosibirsk, Novosibirskoe oblastnoe izdatel’stvo, 1938.
16mo, 131, [1] pp.

In original brown cloth. Without dust jacket as issued. With errata slip.
Near very good condition, text block lightly cracked in a few places.

A rare provincial edition. First edition. One of 10 000 copies published.

This collection of legends and true tales is devoted to Altai industrial workers' folklore and is considered the first comprehensive book on this topic.
This part of folklore was poorly researched before. Before the Revolution, it was not a part of scholarly research and remained largely unknown, as the primary focus was on peasants and their folklore. The deliberate collection of factory and plant folklore began only in 1923-1925, but it progressed very slowly. Moreover, the early studies mainly focused on songs and ditties, and only later were workers' fairy tales, legends, traditions, and narratives recorded, which significantly expanded the concept of workers' folklore. Most likely, one of the first books on this topic was published in Smolensk (Western Russia), containing texts and articles under the title 'Folklore of Factory and Plant Workers' in 1934.
One of the least explored areas remained Siberia, particularly Altai. This collection compiles significant texts on the subject, including versions of goldfield songs, narratives, and legends — a kind of 'chronicle' where history is intricately intertwined with fantasy, recorded by the collector in various factory settlements. The texts in this book were gathered by the folklorist between 1936 and 1938, with a few reprinted from pre-revolutionary editions. Moreover, at the end, there is an article of historical content discussing the history and life of Altai industrial workers, an overview of the scarce earlier materials of such folklore, how the material in this book was gathered by the folklorist, and commentary on each piece of folklore included.
The book was prepared by Aleksandr Misurev (1909-1973), a writer and folklorist, known as a collector of workers' (mountain mining) folklore in the Siberian region. This is Misurev's first book featuring legends and true tales, while the second edition of this collection, revised and expanded under the title 'Legends and True Tales: Folklore of the Old Miners of Southern and Western Siberia', was published in 1940.
The preface for the book was written by Mark Azadovsky (1888-1954), a prominent scholar of folklore and Russian literature, and a professor. Since before the Revolution, he participated in ethnographic expeditions across Siberia, including those commissioned by the Imperial Academy of Sciences and the Russian Geographical Society. For many years, he headed the Department of Folklore at Leningrad State University, but was dismissed during Stalin’s anti-cosmopolitan campaigns of 1948-1953.