The heroes of this book are Anatoly Kuzmich Tarasenkov, in the 30-50s the leading Soviet critic (Stalin knew him, Fadeev patronized him), a bibliophile (he collected a unique poetic library), a man of complex and generally unenviable fate: until the end of his days he played the role of an ideological machine stamping out the necessary articles, apparently believing that it was their creation that is his "security with a diploma."