Bilbo holds the Arkenstone while Smaug flies snorting his fury above

As I said in my last post, the first edition of The Hobbit was published in the Soviet Union in 1976 as a hardback children’s book. Translation was by Natalia Rakhmanova with illustrations by artist Mikhail Belomlinsky. Notice anything different about Bilbo?

That’s right, his entire legs are hairy, not just his feet. That’s because in the Russian language feet and legs are the same word, so while the artist had read the text (and carefully, because the illustrations accurately depict what happens) he went by what the translator gave him. I imagine a qualifying word should have been used to indicate just the feet, as in Spanish where dedos means both fingers and toes, with dedos de pie indicating toes. But that wasn’t done. So, the werewolf legs.

I admit when I first saw this illustration it felt very alien, as much as a picture of a happy hobbit can be that is. He looks like he ran hip-deep through some thick, black mud. But with time, I’ve softened to it. It really is charming for a children’s book. And it relates to deeper Russian folklore traditions, with characters transforming into bears and human-like animal hybrids.

I like the style of the artist too. The pictures have a linocut or woodblock print quality. Simple, sparse, yet full of motion. They could almost be retro depictions of that sort of 1950s-1960s style done today — ageless. And the happy face of Bilbo? That’s based on a real person — actor Yevegeny Leonev, who looks a bit like American actor Danny DeVito. That’s him to left. Reportedly, he was very pleased he had been “cast” as a character in the book.

Here’s a quartet of full-page illustrations from the text. If you’ve read it, you’ll know what they depict.

To me all these pictures have a Russian flair. The peasant style of the Beorning’s tunic and sandals, Gandalf’s long-bearded but unmustached face, the pageboy haircuts of the human soldiers, all reference an earlier, Medieval period in Russia’s history. Note Gollum’s strange appearance, too. The trilogy had not been released (officially) in Russia at the time, so it wasn’t yet known he was a deformed Hobbit relative instead of some other creature.

As for the fourth picture, I can guess those are orcs, or goblins as they were called in the book, riding the wolves. But again, there was a mistranslation somewhere, and they wound up looking more like rampaging Vikings. You can view a fuller set here.

Below is a sample of a header page, showing the small illustrations before each chapter.

I don’t know if this edition ever had a modern re-release but it should have.

In the following posts of this series I’ll be looking at more Russian hobbits.