One of the first Soviet classics, the author of the famous “Bronetrain 14-69” Vsevolod Ivanov belongs to that generation of writers who in the 20s experienced an unprecedented rise, and then, for several decades, wrote works “on the table”, not hoping to ever publish them. Vsevolod Ivanov reflects on his fate and the writers of his generation in his diaries, which are printed in full for the first time. Diaries Ivanova period 1924-1963 . include a description of historical events of the time, portraits of contemporaries - politicians, writers, artists, actors and directors (B.) Pasternak, M. Zoschenko, and . Ehrenburg, A. Fadeeva, A. Marienhof, P. Konchalovsky, S. Michaels et al . ); memories (about St. Petersburg of the 20s, friendship with the “Serapion Brothers”), thoughts about the role of art in modern society . The war diaries that make up the bulk of the book differ in many ways from the 19411945 documentary literature. They acquire the features of artistic prose, close in its poetics to the “fantastic realism” of M.. Bulgakov and A. Platonova . The diaries are accompanied by a scientific commentary, which allows them to be considered in the context of historical time, literary life of that period and literary life.