In 1928, Maxim Gorky wrote, “…Russian literature has one of the brilliant successors of the colossal work of its classics — Tolstoy, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, and Leskov — in the face of Sergeyev-Tsensky.”
On the shelves, there are various editions of “Sevastopol Labors”, including those in the national languages of the Soviet Union republics, as well as in English, German, French, Romanian, Polish, Finnish and Chinese; the collected works in 10 volumes, published in 75,000 copies in 1955–1956; and the epic “Russia’s Transfiguration”, published in Crimea in 1956–1959.
One of Sergeyev-Tsensky’s first works to be translated into European languages was the novel “Transfiguration” (which was later renamed “Valya”). With Gorky’s assistance, the novel was translated into French and English and published in France and the United States. Maxim Gorky wrote the prefaces to these editions of “Transfiguration”. The book was published in New York in 1926 and in Paris in 1930.
The upper part of the displayed bookcase consists of shelves. The sliding glass doors have a plain beam in the middle of the section, with a lock at the bottom. The lower section of the cupboard has two-leaved doors. The tall oak bookcase contains works by Sergey Sergeyev-Tsensky: the three upper shelves hold books published in the USSR and the two lower shelves — those published abroad. This first exhibition was organized by the writer himself on the occasion of his 80thbirthday in 1955.
“Brusilov’s Breakthrough” was published in London in 1945 and in Helsinki in 1946; “The Sorrow of the Fields” and “Movements” were printed in Czechoslovakia; “Valya” and “Selected Works” came out in Hungary; “Seek, Always Seek!” was published in Romania; “Sevastopol Labors” was translated into Czech, German, Romanian and Polish in 1953–1957.
By 1972, during the years of Soviet power, Sergeyev-Tsensky’s works had been published 30 times with a total of 929,000 copies in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic alone. According to the data of the All-Union Book Chamber, Sergey Sergeyev-Tsensky’s books were published in fifteen national languages of the Soviet republics with a total of over 10 million copies (of 178 book titles), including 9,788,000 copies in Russian (of 147 book titles) and 335,000 copies (of 31 book titles) in languages of the USSR.
