This book reflects the spirit of times-when the most dramatic events of the 20th century were happening in Russia and the USSR.

A transcription and translation of a 1967-68 interview with the founder of the Formalist School of literary theory, Viktor Shklovsky, this volume offers a slice of Russian micro-history, like the contributions of Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg but even more trustworthy because it relies on the living voice of that history. Through the transcription of a six-hour phono-document, the readers hear the voice of a real participant in events that for the longest time in the USSR were forbidden to discuss or write about.

Shklovsky, besides being a well-known and brilliant literary theorist, was a friend and interlocutor of many famous people whose lives and deaths, up to these days, remain a mystery to us.

Through these informal dialogues that are not constrained by censorship or fear, we will be able to shed some more light on the real characters, instincts, habits, and views of those people. By "listening" to these dialogues, readers will see the reflection of history in the eyes of a real witness who, in most cases, was just a good fellow citizen and suffered during those times, like thousands of others.

Translated by: Slav N. Gratchev
Afterword by: Victor Fet
Contributions by: Alexey Lobov