About the book: 1963 / In encyclopedias you can read about Vadim Podbelsky only a dozen meager lines. Meanwhile, the short but wonderful life of Podbelsky, a professional Leninist revolutionary, is a feat for the glory of the revolution. “He wanted to live and work in such a way that his muscles would tear and his bones would creak,” A. V. Lunacharsky said about him. B. I. Racine’s book is the first attempt to show the life of this outstanding man, a talented journalist, People’s Commissar of Posts and Telegraphs in the first years of Soviet power.