Andrey Turkov, a famous critic and literary critic, presents to readers one of the first biographies of Alexander Tvardovsky (1910–1971) in modern times, his version of his fate, around which controversy continues. As a poet, the author of the famous “Vasily Terkin”, the most uplifting work of the war years, Tvardovsky is popularly loved. As the long-term head of the “New World”, under which the magazine took a course towards criticizing the Stalinist leadership of the country, exposing the whole “truth, dry land, no matter how bitter” about collectivization, repression and the war itself, publishing the “hazing” works of V. Nekrasov, V. Grossman, A. Solzhenitsyn (the book does not ignore the complexity of the relationship between the latter and Tvardovsky) - he is still at the center of heated discussions. In the direction of the magazine, a number of critics and party leaders saw “inflated criticism”, belittling the victory in the war and the achievements of socialism, the weakening of the foundations of the state, as well as “the great delusion of the poet.” A. M. Turkov, defending Tvardovsky’s position, shows him as a passionate, honest, principled literary and public figure who thought about the people’s interests. The book is polemical, just as the figure of its hero is still polemical, just as the recent history of our country itself is polemical, the epic comprehension of which lies ahead.