The diaries of Alexander Nikolaevich Benois (1870–1960), covering the years 1918–1924, have never been published before. A famous and fashionable painter, an authoritative critic and art historian, a respected public figure - during these difficult years he was an artist and director at the Mariinsky, Alexandrinsky and Bolshoi Drama Theatres, and a book illustrator, and the head of the Hermitage Art Gallery. Alexandre Benois called his detailed daily notes “a protocol of the current madness in an atmosphere of chaos, lies and nonsense.”