“I, Boris Lvovich Vasiliev, was born on May 21, 1924 in the family of a Red Army commander in the city of Smolensk...” - these are the opening lines of the autobiography. “Boris Vasiliev, like millions of his peers, before becoming anyone, became a soldier... " - this is from the critical prefaces/afterwords commenting on the prose of the author, popular in Russia and abroad. Both are true. Truth - this, perhaps, is the main thing in what B. Vasiliev serves in literature.