This book is the first part of a two-volume series dedicated to Russian literature of the twentieth century. Each chapter is a page of history through the eyes of writers and poets who witnessed the main events of the era in which they lived and created. The first volume includes lectures on the works of such outstanding personalities as Chekhov, Gorky, Mayakovsky, Yesenin, Platonov, Nabokov and others. Dmitry Bykov seems to take us back to the year in which this or that book was created. The book is based on the popular program “One Hundred Lectures with Dmitry Bykov.”