Mark Aldanov is an incredibly popular writer of the 20th century, who immediately after the appearance of his works gained a reputation as one of the most talented writers of his time, the author of historical novels so beloved by many readers. V. Nabokov gave a succinct definition of the poetics of M. Aldanov: “The smile of the creator forms the soul of the creature.” The novel “The Beginning of the End” tells about the tragic events in Western Europe and Russia in 1937 and the civil war in Spain. For the first time in fiction, Aldanov summed up the bloody events of 1937 and spoke about the spiritual kinship of fascism and communism. The damned questions of the 30s, the connection between Lenin's ideas and Stalin's atrocities, the powerlessness and strength of democracy - these questions are some of the most important in the novel. Through the mouth of one of his heroes, Aldanov determined that Russian revolutionaries established the morality of hatred in their consciousness; In the basis of the misanthropic constructions of the theorists of the Third Reich, the Russian writer saw a similar justification for hatred, only the hatred of Aryans for non-Aryans. The book is being published to mark the writer’s 125th birthday.