In the story “Inheritance,” dedicated to the memory of his mother, “Nikolai Samokhin managed, without falling into polemical pathos or false emotion, to show how difficult the so-called “ordinary people” really are, how firmly rooted in them they can be concepts of decency, justice, duty. The story “Inheritance” uses excerpts from the manuscript of a mother who, in her declining years, decided to record (what if it might be useful to someone?) the experience of her life. The first paragraphs are presented without editing: with all errors, words merging together, without punctuation marks. The title itself sounds like this: “Memories of my past years.” And yet, reading these pages (later carefully edited by my son), you understand where the origins of Samokhin’s intelligentsia lie.” (I. Fonyakov)