The Lord of the Rings? First Russian Ed. 1966 Extremely Rare J. R. R. Tolkien

THE LORD OF THE RINGS. The Tale of the Ring. This is a very rare first Russian edition translated in 1966, but never printed due to the prohibition of the Soviet Union. The book was then published in 1991. After the book was dismissed by Soviet censorship, independent translators took a great risk spreading Tolkien's fiction in the Soviet Union. Amidst the Cold War, Soviet censorship was suspicious of all things Western. Written by a British writer,'The Lord of the Rings' was no exception. To share the classics of high fantasy with readers in the USSR, Soviet translators attempted to translate it illegally, publish the story under a different name, transform it into a play and even rewrite Tolkien's book as a whole new sci-fi story. In 1966, Soviet translator Zinaida Bobyr attempted a desperate move to adapt Tolkien's fiction to the standards of the Soviet literary magazine Tekhnika-Molodezhi Eng. Convinced the Soviet censorship would not allow printing a straightforward translation of the original, Bobyr transformed Tolkien's epic fantasy into a science fiction novel and hid the magic theme behind the facade of rational scientific discoveries. In Bobyr's translation, Tolkien's original tale featured as a story within a different sci-fi story about five scientists who discovered an ancient ring that, they concluded, was a device for storing information which it revealed if stimulated with a spark. Bobyr's attempt was unsuccessful, though, as the magazine declined to publish the manuscript. The book is currently protected by a transparent film, for more photos you can ask.