A pair of Soviet Russian hardcover books. First. The Knight in the Panthers Skin by Shota Rustaveli. Published by the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1938. Translated from Georgian by Panteleimon Petrenko. Illustrations by Sergei Kobuladze. With a handwritten dedication on the flyleaf, dated 1948. Shota Rustaveli was a medieval Georgian poet whose main work, The Knight in the Panthers Skin, is considered to be the main national epic poem of Georgia. Second. Diaries and Letters of Alexander Ostrovsky. Published by Academia, 1937. Edited by Vladimir Filippov. With 192 illustrations. Cover design by Georgy Manuilov. Alexander Ostrovsky, 1823 to 1886, was a prominent Russian Realist playwright. Academia was a Soviet publishing house that functioned from 1922 till 1937. The publishing house employed many prominent Russian graphic artists and issued over one thousand books during its existence, mostly intellectual and classical literature. Antiquarian Librarian Books Albums For Collectors, Rare Soviet Books.