In this book, the famous critic and literary critic Benedikt Sarnov appears in an unusual genre for him. The book presents a motley mixture of short “true stories” - funny, sad, and sometimes tragic. In some of them, the author talks about events that he himself witnessed, and sometimes took part in. He heard others from his friends, acquaintances, and older contemporaries. Collected together, all these disparate, unrelated facts, incidents, and episodes seem to spontaneously form a picture that captures the image of a bygone era. This publication has been significantly expanded to include new stories not included in the 1998 edition. And some of the stories included in it have been corrected and clarified.