In 1926, the Frankfurter Zeitung newspaper invited the famous Austrian writer and journalist to go to Soviet Russia. Roth set out on the trip in July 1926. His first reports are full of vivid impressions and written in the wake of his movements, but soon he turns to topics that concern him, revealing them on Soviet material.

This book was translated at the First Volga Translation Residency, conducted by the Center for Contemporary Culture " Smena" and the Peredelkino House of Creativity. Translators from Kazan, Volgograd, Astrakhan, Minsk, Moscow and St. Petersburg translated Joseph Roth’s essays in the summer of 2023 in the National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan and on the island-city of Sviyazhsk.

The publishers express gratitude to the Museum-Reserve “Island-town of Sviyazhsk” » for assistance in organizing the translation residency and for providing images from the funds. The text is illustrated with photographs from the book “1914–1930. Seize annees d'histoire en 700 photographies" (“1914–1930. Sixteen years of history in 700 photographs”), published by Ernest Flammarion editeur in Paris in 1931 and the Ogonyok magazines published in 1926.