The second book of “Notes” by Lydia Chukovskaya takes us from the late 30s – early 40s – to the 50s. Anna Akhmatova, her difficult life after the famous decree of 1946, her attempts to achieve the release of her newly arrested son, her poems, her Pushkin studies, her apt and laconic judgments about literature, about time, about Russian history - this is the content of this volume. This content organically includes the main signs of the time - the death of Stalin, the 20th Congress, the Thaw, the rehabilitation of many innocently convicted, the persecution of Pasternak because of Doctor Zhivago, his death, the beginning of new frosts. This book is not only about Akhmatova, but about everything this decade, about the thoughts and feelings with which many people around Akhmatova perceived this era.