The classic translation of Yaroslav Hasek's novel by Pyotr Grigorievich Bogatyrev has become an integral part of Soviet culture and literature. The unique work of the famous prose writer and essayist Sergei Soloukh returns the reader to the era and cultural environment, of which the Czech original was rightfully a part. The era of the Habsburgs, Hohenzollern, Romanov and millions of modest subjects of these monarchs. The very one in which exactly one hundred years ago, in 1914, the Great or, as they say now, the First World War broke out. It is unlikely that the reader will be able to relive all the storms and catastrophes of that time, but the great novel, which has acquired a genuine taste and color, will want to re-read, it seems to us, for sure.