About the book: year / The novel shows nihilistic attempts to destroy historical Russia. Having pitted in this novel representatives of different social forces who fought with each other during the period of peasant reform, Pisemsky gave preference to supporters of the ideal of Russian national identity, who, in the writer’s opinion, retained “common sense” and did not lose their face in a complex, contradictory reality 60 -X. Pisemsky considered everything else a temporary obsession and a lie..