At the end of the novel, a list is given: brother, aunt, uncles, cousins and brothers of the author — 16 people from this family suffered or died during the repressions.
Having a title of nobility, it was possible only by a miracle to survive in the country of the victorious proletariat. The heroes of this memoir novel, the Golitsyns and the Trubetskoys, Raevskys, Sheremetevs, and Baryatinskys who became related to them, lived for decades as outcasts, they were expelled from Moscow, arrested, they were not hired, and their children were not allowed to study. Sergei Golitsyn, whose family goes back to the Novgorod prince Gleb, who lived in the middle of the fourteenth century, describes his exultation when he was finally hired as a survey party technician. And the dream of becoming a writer had to be postponed for a long 30 years. But even in poverty and humiliation, the Golitsyns surprisingly retained steadfastness and dignity. During arrests, they refused to slander others, did not renounce their fathers, risking