Reina Pennington

I had a gratifying little win last week. I’ve been trying to track down a backup copy of the most important book on the Night Witches, written by their chief of staff, whom I interviewed. It’s by far the most complete source with copies of documents, precise maps, and lots of photos. I like having two copies so that I have one to mark up, and a backup in case of damage to the primary copy.

Irina Rakobolskaia, and N. F. Kravtsova-Meklin, eds.
Нас Называли Ночными Ведьмами: Так Воевал Женский 46-Й Гвардейский Полк Ночных Бомбардировщиков

(We Were Called Night Witches: This Is How the Female 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment Fought),
Second expanded edition (Moskva: Isdatel’stvo Moskovogo Universiteta, 2005).

I can no longer order directly from Russia as I used to (Russian online sellers seem to be blocked from mailing to the US, for the past several years). You can sometimes find specialist sellers in the US selling the books for ten times the ruble exchange rate, which is also true if you happen to find something on ebay. But this morning I found three booksellers with US shipping addresses who had the book, priced at $14 to $55 (the current price in rubles to dollars is only about $5).  I ordered several copies to keep and to donate. Only a dozen libraries in the US have this book.

There is a Kindle version, oddly, which I also got. There used to be a way to get around Kindle’s copy protections so you actually own the books you buy; we’ll see what the latest is on that.

Icing on the cake: I found one Russian bookseller that only offers ebooks and audiobooks, and they have the audiobook version!  Initially I hit the same pay wall, but their support folks told me, “Our users in foreign countries can pay for their subscriptions through the iOS mobile app. Unfortunately, due to recent global events, other payment methods are unavailable . . . “

And that worked!

There is great satisfaction in teasing out a knotty little problem like this, and relief in more securely preserving this historical source.