Osipova, Z. [Golden Childhood]. Zolotoe Detstvo. 

Illustrations by M. Mikhaelis.

[Cheboksary], Chuvashknigoizdat, 1967.
8vo, [12] pp.incl.wr., ill.

In original pictorial wrappers. Issued without title page.
Near very good condition, vary faintly spotted, lightly rubbed, short tear to back cover.

Rare provincial edition. The author's first book (the second was published only in 2023). One of 30 000 copies published.

This collection of children poems was written by Zinaida Osipova (?-1983), a poet and translator who was also the wife of a prominent Chuvash writer, playwright, and physician, one of the founders of professional Chuvash dramatic theater.
The cover and delicate illustrations were created by Margarita Mikhaelis (1898–1981), a children’s book illustrator of German origin. She was the wife of graphic artist and painter Pavel Kharybin, who was arrested and died in a camp during the Great Purge. Branded as a ‘family member of a traitor to the homeland’, Margarita was forced to leave Moscow and settle in Chuvashia, where she had a lasting impact on the local art scene.
This cover is particularly notable for featuring a Chuvash child (a Turkic ethnic group) in an everyday scene alongside Slavic-looking children. In the USSR, depictions of different nationalities were often confined to dedicated publications promoting the 'friendship of nations'. Such representations typically focused on larger ethnic groups, primarily from the Soviet republics, rather than smaller communities like the Chuvash people. Here, however, we see a quiet, natural moment of childhood—an uncommon and significant artistic choice for the time.