Before you are the unique memoirs of Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov. Over the course of twenty years, from 1919 to 1939, he went from a volunteer sailor to the People's Commissar of the Navy, becoming one of the youngest naval commanders ever to hold such a post. “On the Eve” is the only memoir of the Soviet highest naval commander of this period. In them N.G. Kuznetsov describes the work of the country's political and naval leadership in the pre-war years, talks about the construction of the Soviet Navy, gives vivid portraits of its major figures, and also analyzes the reasons for its successes and failures.