About the book: year / The author’s father, a fifteen-year-old high school student, joined the White Army in 1918. According to his oral memories, six stories were written: action-packed and psychological. The hero of the story "The Terrible Bird Jackdaw", the culprit of the death of a White Guard, goes to serve in a White regiment, where one of the soldiers is the brother of the murdered man... In the story "The Fisherman", a former secret police agent who killed many revolutionaries offers his services to the Socialist Revolutionaries - the enemies of the Bolsheviks. But the Social Revolutionaries are not going to forgive the provocateur and want to execute him. Having escaped at the last minute, the agent, however, serves the whites not out of fear, but out of conscience. The motives for his behavior are intriguingly unclear and are revealed only at the end of the work. The same applies to the strange anarchist Kostarev - the hero of the story that gave the name to the collection "Combinations against the Course of History." Kostarev talked about the benefits of bloodshed, almost shot his interlocutor - and later went under execution to save this man and his family. Showing such unusual heroes with their deeply hidden truth, which does not “coincide” with either the truth of the Reds or the truth whites, distinguishes the story from everything written about the Civil War. From books dedicated to her, we know about the fate of white emigrants, we know about participants in the White movement who, sincerely or insincerely, began to serve the Soviet regime. The collection tells about those who did not want to leave the country, but also did not accept the new order. These people lived an inconspicuous life, preserving their secret, keeping within themselves an ideal Russia. While strongly sympathizing with them, the author, nevertheless, is inclined to the point of view that White could not and should not have won. The collection was published in Russian in Germany: Verlag Thomas Beckmann, Verein Freier Kulturaktion e.V., Berlin – Brandenburg, 1997.