Letters from the army make up the majority of all Dovlatov’s letters preserved in the archives of his father Donat Mechik; the rest were sent from Tallinn and New York. Only sometimes they have a day and a month on them, and sometimes the dates (of receipt?) are stamped by the addressee. If Dovlatov had been alive, it is unlikely that he would have approved the publication of his youthful poems. But, on the other hand, he himself once said: “After death, history begins.”