“August the Fourteenth” was conceived by the author in 1937 - not yet as the First Knot, but as an introduction to a great novel about the Russian revolution. At the same time, in 1937 in Rostov-on-Don, all the materials on the Samsonov disaster available in Soviet conditions (considerable) were collected - and the first chapters were written: the arrival of a colonel from Headquarters at Samsonov’s headquarters, the move of the headquarters to Naidenburg, lunch there... Construction These chapters remained almost unchanged in the final edition. In that first stage of work, many chapters were devoted to Sasha Lenartovich, but these chapters disappeared over the years. There were also chapters on the economy of Shcherbakov (the author’s maternal grandfather), where even then the question of Stolypin’s activities and the significance of his murder was raised.