The proposed publication draws a new angle on the creative work of the author, who does not need introductions or recommendations. When Sartre was called up for military service in the fall of 1939, he began to keep these diary and work notes, which reflected his view of the future of France and Europe and the way he understood the liminal situations of life. If we consider “Being and Nothingness” to be Sartre’s main philosophical work, then “The Diaries” precede this work as a kind of historical, biographical and psychological introduction, marked by the penetration of that diary prose, where the hidden work of thought on human doubts and expectations appears in direct reference to itself The phenomenon of war is a common theme in the diaries of 20th century intellectuals. Driven by his temperament and the effort of thought, Sartre gives it a meaning that predetermined the turn in his own philosophical development. The defeat in the “strange” war was perceived by him as an intellectual defeat and forced him to abandon the refined liberal pacifism that he shared with many of his contemporaries on the eve of the war, without taking into account its possible reality. The accompanying reflections on fascism, democracy, the crisis of bourgeois civilization and liberal values make the Diaries relevant and timely reading for the modern Russian reader.