The first volume of the Collected Works of M. M. Bakhtin is the beginning of the thinker’s path. The volume publishes his early philosophical works, which were not published during the author’s lifetime. The first posthumous publications of these works (in 1975, 1979, and 1986) were textually deficient; For this edition, their texts were re-prepared from manuscripts, clarified and supplemented with new fragments that could not be read. Three major early works of M. M. Bakhtin appear in restored, essentially new texts. As in the previously published volumes (5, 2 and 6) of the Collected Works, the texts of the works are thoroughly commented on. The texts are accompanied by facsimile reproductions of sheets of manuscripts by M. M. Bakhtin.