From the compiler and publisher It turned out to be very difficult to select the most interesting, most informative from 153 interviews, avoiding repetition. The repetitions embarrassed Brodsky himself, but he perceived them as an inevitability of the interview genre. However, it seems to us that repetitions are of considerable value for the reader, because they emphasize the range of ideas that did not leave Brodsky alone throughout his life. In addition, in order to exclude repetitions, it would be necessary to subject some interviews to a kind of censorship, which is highly unethical: all of Brodsky’s interlocutors have the right to expect that their interviews will not be changed when reprinted. Therefore, we tried to keep everything as in the original, including the names of the interviews under which they were originally published. But this principle has not been taken to extremes: some names have been changed, and the texts themselves have been edited by the publisher taking into account the norms of spelling and punctuation adopted in the Russian Federation. A number of stylistic and factual errors that crept into previous publications were also corrected. However, we also did not strive for excessive unification of the texts and tried to preserve in the book all the individual features - of Brodsky, his interlocutors, and translators. This collection does not include any of Solomon Volkov’s interviews, since they were all published as a separate book in Russian both in America and in Russia. On the other hand, many interviews are published in this book for the first time, and not only for the first time in Russian, but also for the first time in the world. The reader will find complete information about the publication of each interview in the attached bibliography. All interviews are arranged in chronological order of meetings with the poet. We express our gratitude to all magazines, newspapers and interview authors who agreed to include their conversations with Brodsky in our collection, we count on forgiveness for unintentional errors and ask you to send your comments, which will be gratefully taken into account in subsequent editions of this book. Valentina Polukhina, Professor of Russian Literature, Keele University, England

Igor Zakharov, Publisher, Moscow