[The East: Journal of Literature, Science, and Art]. Vostok: Zhurnal literatury, nauki i iskusstva. Is. 1-2. 

Peterburg, Izd-vo “Vsemirnaia literature”, 1922-1923.
8vo, Is.1. 126, [2] pp., 6 l.ill.; Is.2. 164, [4] pp., 5 l.ill.        

In original pictorial wrappers. Partly unopened (is.2).
In good condition, lightly rubbed, sunned, losses and cracks to spine, tears to cover edges, owner stamp ‘D.B. Astradantsev’ to front cover and title.

Rare issues featuring a landmark article on the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas and the first Russian translation from 'The Tales of Ise'. One of 3 000 (№ 1) and 4 250 (№ 2) copies published.

This important journal 'Vostok' was published between 1922 and 1925 in five issues, edited by leading Russian Orientalists, including the , Soviet sinologist Vasily Alekseyev, the Mongolist Boris Vladimirtsov, the Arabist Ignaty Krachkovsky, and Sergei Oldenburg, a distinguished scholar and academician renowned for his pioneering research on Central Asian Buddhist sites. The journal featured translations of classical works from Eastern literatures, scholarly articles in the field of Oriental studies, and contributions on art and science, all focused on the cultures of the East. As Oldenburg stated in the preface to the first issue, the journal sought to 'bring the East closer to a broad circle of conscious Russian readers', by illuminating both the spiritual traditions of the ancient East and the dynamic transformations of the modern East. Many of the texts appeared in Russian for the first time in 'Vostok'.
The first issue included a translation of four novellas from 'Liaozhai zhiyi', the celebrated collection of classical Chinese tales by Qing dynasty writer Pu Songling, which also appeared in Russian as a separate book in 1922.  It also featured two translated excerpts from 'The Hundred Thousand Songs' by Milarepa, one of Tibet’s most renowned yogis and mystical poets; prose poems by Ameen Rihani, the Lebanese-American writer, intellectual, and political thinker; and the first Russian translation from Bengali of a work by Rabindranath Tagore—a short piece titled 'Malen'kaia Poema v Proze' ('A Little Poem in Prose'; possibly a free translation of 'The Rainy Day').
In addition, the first issue featured a brief article by Oldenburg titled 'The Caves of the Thousand Buddhas', which included photographs from the Second Russian Turkestan Expedition (1914–1915). His records are particularly valuable today, as many of the monuments he documented have since been damaged or lost; the full version of his report was only published in Chinese in 2005 and has yet to appear in either Russian or English.
Other significant contributions included an article by Alekseev titled 'The Chinese Republic', which offered a concise historical overview of the republic; a study titled 'The First Secret Society of the Young Bukharans', detailing the origins of a reformist secret society founded in 1909 in Bukhara that formed part of the Jadidist movement aimed at modernizing Central Asia along Western scientific lines.
The second issue featured translations of poetry by Li Bo (Li Bai) from the classical Chinese collection ‘Gu Feng’ (‘In the Old Manner’). Notably, it also included excerpts from ‘The Tales of Ise’, one of the foundational texts of classical Japanese literature, translated by Nikolai Konrad, a Latvian-Soviet Orientalist and founder of the Soviet school of Japanese studies. These likely represented one of the earliest Russian translations of the work, and in 1923, Konrad’s full book-length translation was published—the first complete European-language translation. Other highlights included an article on 'Indo-Persian and modern Indian painting', an article about the First Congress of Russian Egyptologists held in August 1922, along with several other significant scholarly and literary contributions.
Many of the authors featured in these issues were subjected to repression as ‘spies’. Some, like Julian Shchutsky, a sinologist, Mikhail Tubianskii, an Indologist, Tibetologist, and Mongolist, and Alexander Samoylovich, an Orientalist-Turkologist, were executed.
This copy comes from the private library of Dmitrii Astradentsev (1904–1945), a composer and pianist, one of the pioneers of film music in Russia.