“Be sure to write down,” Ilf often told his co-author, “everything passes, everything is forgotten. I understand - I don’t want to write it down. I want to stare, not write down. But then you need to force yourself.” Facts, events, the smallest details, and most importantly, portraits of strange, eccentric, absurd and narrow-minded compatriots - all this, taken from notebooks and seemingly written for oneself, formed a colorful image of the “land of unafraid idiots” , where the events of “The Twelve Chairs” and “The Golden Calf” unfold, the region where “the Caucasian ridge was created after Lermontov and according to his instructions,” and the “uncultured person” sees in a dream “a bacterium in the form of a large dog,” the region from which so and neither the “great schemer” nor his creators will escape.