DUNIN-KOZICKA Maria - Storm from the East. Memories from Kiev (1918-1920) [first edition 1925].

Kraków 1925, Krakow Publishing Company. 13.5x19.5 cm, pp. XIII, 512, black and white photographs on separate pages, half-leather bookbinding. Very good condition (longitudinal rubbing on rear pastedown).

First edition. Fictionalized memoirs of Maria Dunin-Kozicka (1877-1948), writer and novelist, from the period when she was forced to leave her estate in Lemieszówka, Kiev region, fleeing the Bolshevik invasion. The book includes black-and-white photographs of several borderland estates: Dunin-Borkowski's palace in Klimaszówka, Nikorowicz's manor in Rosochowata, Scibor-Rylski's manor in Browki, Dachowski's palace in Leskova, Jaroszyński's palace in Antopol, Kosielski's palace in Vonkowce, Golejewski's palace in Czarnokozince, Starzeński's palace in Paniowce, Kossecki's palace in Kaczmarzow and the manor in Lemieszowka, where the author lived.

"This is "Borderland" literature, telling us, who did not personally experience those terrible transitions of 1917-1920, about the struggle that Polish society, having grown up in the Borderlands and grown close to them, fought against the storm coming from the East, and to which it succumbed - for the time being. In recent years, stories have proliferated, making it possible to reconstruct more comprehensively this new episode of our history, heroic and martyrdom at the same time. (...) The author knows how to depict poignantly the horror and hideousness of the scenes experienced, just to point out as examples the characterization of the Kiev Chekazwyczajka or the description of the "torture gardens", surpassing by far the fantastic descriptions of the French novelist, because based on the true and deepest experiences of her own. Her chilling descriptions will one day be cited as classic documents for the knowledge of the Dantean scenes that the Polish intelligentsia and landed gentry in Ukraine went through." [excerpt from St. Estreicher's preface].