Val'be, Boris [John Reed]. Dzhon Rid. 

[Cover by Hugo Gellert]. 

Leningrad, Krasnaia gazeta, 1930.
8vo, 116, [2] pp., ill.  

In original pictorial wrappers. 
In good condition, lightly rubbed, losses to spine, traces of creasing to front cover. 

The only edition. One of 15 000 copies published. 

The book is dedicated to John Reed (1887–1920) – the American journalist and communist activist who became an accidental witness to the events of the Russian Revolution in Petrograd and later chronicled them in his famous work 'Ten Days That Shook the World'. Reed hoped to see a similar communist revolution in the United States and in 1919 co-founded the short-lived Communist Labor Party of America. He died of spotted typhus in Moscow in 1920 and was honored with a hero’s burial by the Soviet government. Reed remains one of only five Americans interred at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
Of particular interest is the book’s cover, which was borrowed (likely without authorization) from the October 1930 issue of 'New Masses' – an American Marxist magazine closely associated with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and published from 1926 to 1948. 'New Masses' succeeded earlier radical socialist journals such as 'The Masses' (1911–1917), where Reed himself had worked. The October 1930 issue was a special John Reed number, and its cover was designed by Hugo Gellert (1892–1985), a Hungarian-American illustrator and muralist who was also a member of the Communist Party. Gellert worked as a staff artist for 'The New Yorker' and 'The New York Times', and during World War II he helped organize 'Artists for Defense' and later served as chairman of 'Artists for Victory'.
The book also features a portrait of John Reed made during the Second Congress of the Communist International in Moscow in the summer of 1920 by the renowned Soviet painter Isaak Brodsky, best known for his portraits of Vladimir Lenin and other revolutionary leaders. Reed died only a few months later, in October of that same year.

OCLC locates one copy of this edition only, at the New York Public Library.