This book is the third in a documentary series about the fates of Soviet writers. The first, ‘The Knot. Poets of Friendship and Breaks,’ is dedicated to the 1920s and 1930s. The second, ‘Noah’s Ark of Writers,’ is about the evacuation of Soviet writers and their families during the war to Tashkent, Alma-Ata, Chistopol, and Yelabuga. Together, these books create a kind of fresco of Soviet literature during the Stalin period, in which the life of a writer becomes a chain of compromises, often ending in his death. Today, at a new turn in Russian history, the process of personal ‘disintegration’ of the artist and the artistic environment is becoming more relevant than ever.