About the book: 2019 / In 1922, the Bolsheviks expelled from the USSR about two hundred representatives of the intelligentsia they did not like. The author of this book, astronomer and professor at Moscow University Vsevolod Viktorovich Stratonov (1869–1938), was also on board the so-called “philosophical ship”. In the first years of Soviet power, Stratonov achieved considerable success as an organizer of scientific research, and was among the founders of the first astrophysical observatory in Russia; from it later grew the famous State Astronomical Institute named after. P.K. Sternberg. At the same time, Stratonov was an irreconcilably conflicted person - he not only incurred the disfavor of the Bolshevik party, but also quarreled with many fellow scientists. Stratonov's memoirs take the reader to different parts of pre-revolutionary and early Soviet Russia - to the Kuban and the Caucasus, Central Asia, Moscow, Tver, Murom and Petrograd. The author describes how students studied, passed exams and rebelled, how astronomers observed the starry sky and military topographers and surveyors went on expeditions, how the Cossacks, Caucasian highlanders and the peoples of Turkestan lived, how the bureaucratic world was structured on the outskirts of the empire, how the revolution was accomplished and how Moscow professors fought for higher education. In Stratonov’s memoirs, the reader will find not only valuable historical evidence, but also a fascinating narrative.