This collected works of Sergei Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1908–1977) - prose writer, poet, philosopher, playwright, essayist, literary critic, translator - is being published for the first time. The collection opens with the story “Condemned to Live,” written in the late forties and which is the key to the life and work of the writer. This book is a historical document, an epic novel of Russian life in the 18th–20th centuries, written in the genre of autobiographical fiction.