Documents of the Soviet state security agencies, declassified in Ukraine, have become a real Klondike for researchers and journalists. Month after month, year after year, stories found by Eduard Andryushchenko in archival files were turned into articles for Ukrainian and foreign publications. And now they are published under one cover. The heroes of these stories were outstanding artists and cynical killers, agents and Chekists, fugitives and spies. Someone signs absurd confessions, and someone miraculously escapes death. Someone plans an assassination attempt on their relatives, and someone goes to the camps because of their own talkativeness. Someone leaves defiant messages for the KGB, and someone sees the result of his many years of work being destroyed. All these episodes make it possible to better understand the complex and full of contradictions of the life of Ukrainians in the conditions of Soviet totalitarianism.