The plots of the stories printed in this book are based on real facts from the life of our recent party-administrative-command past. The author did not set out to criticize this past retroactively or, as the Arab proverb says: “To pull a dead lion by the tail,” but simply using the examples of these stories (which, naturally, could not be published in that past), through humor, satire, and in some places sarcasm, to once again show the reader how we were ruled by our former authorities. Show it so that we once again understand that there should be no return to such a past, so that we, who in many ways continue to remain blinkered from the cradle by the so-called communist ideology, look back once again and are surprised: “Was it really like that? Was it really such idiocy?” Only by appreciating the past and throwing off the burden of past mistakes can one correctly look into the future. But it should still be good for Russia at some point, despite today’s difficult and troubled times.