Once upon a time, in the early 1990s, I was a cadet at a tank school. An older brother came to visit and wanted to give his father the collected works of Solzhenitsyn... This was the reason. We stocked up on beer and my father told an interesting, sometimes very dark and difficult story. Events develop like a nesting doll, from the 1990s we find ourselves in the 1980s, and then in the 1940s.

Author's notes: The work began in December 2021 and, after a significant pause, completed in September 2023.