Yuri Mikhailovich Gert is the author of the novels “Who, if not you?”, “Labyrinth”, “Verdict”, “Night of Predestination”, “Family Archive”, collections of stories, short stories and journalism. The writer’s works have always been associated with modernity and the most pressing problems posed by society: the individual and the state, freedom and the regime that oppresses people. The novel "HELLENES AND JEWS", included in this collection, is a book-document, a book-report, where everything is reliable - from the first to the last line. There are no invented situations or persons in it - everything was experienced by the author, happened before his eyes... Until 1988, for twenty-three years, Gert worked in the prose department of the literary magazine "Prostor" (Alma-Ata), from where he left as a sign protest against the upcoming publication, which was of a provocative anti-Semitic nature. All the collisions occurring in the magazine are shown by the author against the backdrop of grandiose events shaking the country and its individual regions. The collection also contains stories by Yuri Gert, written by him in different years, but united by one connecting theme - reflections on a person’s self-identification, his belonging to his roots, and the inability to “escape” one’s own fate, connected with the fate of one’s people.