This book is a series of portraits of writers of the Soviet era: Mikhail Bulgakov and Mikhail Zoshchenko, Alexander Fadeev and Yuri Olesha, Sergei Mikhalkov and Alexander Tvardovsky, Valentin Kataev and Nikolai Erdman. The portraits are different: there are detailed ones painted in oils, there are flying graphic sketches, there are also those that can be considered a caricature. And at the same time, this is a collective portrait, whose features give an idea of a certain general phenomenon called the “Soviet writer.” Or - “Soviet intellectual”. The book examines purely separate, individual destinies. And at the same time - a fate common to many.