An outstanding publicist of our time, as he is often called, the last knight of the Soviet era - soldier of the Great Patriotic War, Vladimir Sergeevich Bushin, walked the battle path from Kaluga to Koenigsberg. Then there was Manchuria, the war with Japan... And in peacetime, in literature, he always remained on the front line. While still at the front, when he was twenty, he began keeping a diary. Since then, often repeating Tyutchev’s “Blessed is he who visited this world in its fatal moments,” at different periods of his life he trusted himself to diary entries, without hiding or embellishing anything, at any turning point, remaining a man of honor who did not change his convictions. In the book of his diaries, Vladimir Bushin is unexpected and recognizable, ironic and truthful. It covers almost seven decades, from wartime to the present day, and reveals the social atmosphere of several eras, events of the author’s creative and personal life.