About the book: 1963 / Civil War in the Urals. Much has been written about her. And each book adds something new to what we already know about the events of that unforgettable time, about the people through whose lives the revolution passed through with its difficult trials, which showed everyone what he was worth, whether he lived correctly and why he should live . The events of the Civil War completely determined the difficult fate of the heroes of Joseph Keller’s novel “Harsh Days,” the main action of which takes place in Perm in the winter of 1918 and the first half of 1919. These are the days of the tragic retreat of the Red Army under the onslaught of Kolchak, the days of the underground struggle of the Bolsheviks in Perm captured by the White Guards, the days of the battles for the liberation of the Middle Urals. A great cause requires from every person, even the most ordinary, unnoticed, actions of large, decisive, worthy of time. The extreme complexity and contradictory nature of the situation forces many of the novel’s heroes to look for a new, true path in life, does not allow them to remain on the sidelines, and teaches them to think. And everything honest, the best that is in the Russian people, one way or another takes the side of the Bolsheviks. The best representatives of the old Russian intelligentsia also find their way into the revolution, because they see in the Bolsheviks the only guarantee of the revival of Russia, its future. This is the truth of the revolution.