The teacher, who taught history throughout his working life, at the end of his teaching career was faced with the fact that he taught the wrong history, he did not know the true history. Arkady Lvovich spent his childhood at school in the Baltic states. Here he received a Soviet communist education. Having graduated from Moscow University, the history teacher shares the communist ideology, and tries to conscientiously pass on his knowledge and beliefs to students. In the late 80s, under the influence of the changes taking place in the country, he freed himself from historical mythology. There was an epiphany. The novel tells how the old teacher perceived the changes that had taken place in the country: the collapse of the USSR, the change of the political system, the transition to market relations. How did these events affect the hero’s inner world, his dramatic fate.