In her memoirs, the author talks about the people with whom her life brought her together, many of them are world famous, their destinies highlight a time that one should not yearn for, but one should not forget, before many of them one should bow their heads for their courage. Some of them went through Soviet “training”, some were arrested and deported to the West, and some remained in Russia. On the pages of this book you will meet pianist Svyatoslav Richter and composer Andrei Volkonsky, artists Nikolai Akimov, Nathan Altman and Oscar Rabin, poets Anna Akhmatova and Joseph Brodsky, famous and little-known figures of the Russian diaspora in France, Switzerland and America.