Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1889–1959) belonged to the now almost forgotten cohort of old Bolsheviks. His memoirs cover the period from the end of the 19th century. until the early 1950s. This is the confession of an irreconcilable fighter against autocracy, an “ordinary Leninist guard,” an underground worker, a prison inmate and a political exile. At the same time, the reader will learn first-hand about the mood in the active army and in Petrograd in 1917, how and in what conditions in the Russian province in 1918 the Red Guard, the Cheka bodies, and then the Red Army units were created and operated, what in the 1920s was the local Soviet apparatus, how it understood and carried out the government course in relation to the Russian Orthodox Church, to the “NEPmen”, later to the middle peasants and rural “rich” kulaks, about the atmosphere in the ruling party in the years “Great Terror”, about the everyday life of the Russian and Soviet hinterlands. The book, whose publication is timed to coincide with the 110th anniversary of the first Russian revolution, is intended for specialist historians, as well as anyone interested in the history of Russia in the 20th century.