The book was conceived and written in 1975–1977, when the short Khrushchev thaw was far behind us - at the very height of Brezhnev’s “stagnation”, in conditions under which making any political forecasts was, at the very least, adventurous frivolity. The rampant omnipotent administrative machine, a new cult of personality, an ocean of demagogic lies in which our society has drowned, growing economic ruin, general lawlessness - this is the social and spiritual atmosphere in which the novel was created and which it was intended to recreate.