Zheleznye Puteshestvenniki [Steel Travelers] by Ivanter, B(eniamin Abramovich) & N(ikolai Nikolaevich) Kupreianov (illus)

31 pg. booklet for children documenting the donation of twenty-five tractors to the Soviet Union by American workers, and their journey from the United States to a Soviet collective farm. Illustrated profusely throughout with thirty black-and-white illustrations. 8vo. Original illustrated stapled wrpps., some light soiling to covers, minor rubbing along spine. Moscow (Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo) 1931. Ex-libris Marcel Bekus, Russian revolutionary, with small oval rubber stamp to inside front cover. This book was published at the height of the first Five-Year Plan for industrialization, when the Soviet state undertook major industrial and agrarian reforms. It was written by children's writer and journalist Beniamin Ivanter and illustrated by graphic artist Nikolai Kupreianov. Both contributed to the satirical Rosta windows, propaganda posters created by artists and writers within the ROSTA (Rossiyskoye telegrafnoye agentstvo, or Russian Telegraph Agency) system. Kupreianov was also a member of the OST (Obshchestvo stankistov, or Society of Easel Painters) and illustrated books by Vladimir Maiakovsky and Boris Pasternak. Very scarce; as of December 2018, WorldCat locates only two holdings in North American institutions.