About the book: 1985 / Alexander Skrypnik, the author of this book, is a famous Soviet journalist. His essays, published in Pravda in recent years, are about our contemporaries, about those who live and work next to us today. During his eighteen years of work at Pravda, Alexander Skrypnik traveled throughout the country from the Baltic to Sakhalin, from Providence Bay to Kushka, and met with many people. The heroes of his essays are not outstanding figures. These are ordinary people on whom, as they say, our land rests: a steelworker and a weaver, a watchman at a collective farm drain and the captain of a fishing seiner, a geologist and a lumberjack. But each of them is an individual. This book is about their life, their work, victories and losses, about their suffering and struggle for truth in this life, about their spiritual peace and selfless dedication to their work. The book is published under the editorship of V. Parfenov. Introductory article by I. Shatunovsky.