Stanford's Railway Map of European Russia by Edward Stanford

Code: 54058

 Date: 1919

Folding map.  Folds into own green marbled boards front and back but lacks slipcase.         Dissected into 42 sections and linen-backed .  Russia just after the Revolution.  Overall sheet size:     99.8cms x 124.8 cms.    Finland is at the top of the map and the railways start there moving down to Great Russia, Russia, South Russia, Crimea and Caucasus, Austria, Hungary and into Turkey (Asia Minor).  Scale: 50.823 miles to one inch or 1:3,220.177 of Nature and with four scales of distance below: Eng and Italian , English, French, Russian .  Ownership incription on back linen of Alan Sillitoe (Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner; Saturday Night Sunday Morning and many others).  The signature looks genuine but this cannot be guaranteed but  in the 1960s Sillitoe was celebrated in the Soviet Union as a spokesman for the "oppressed worker" in the West. Invited to tour the country, he visited several times in the 1960s and in 1968 he was asked to address the Congress of Soviet Writers' Unions, where he denounced Soviet human rights abuses.  This is a superb map at a pivotal time in Soviet history.