About the book: 1962 / TO THE READERS Less following the pleasant tradition of sharing memories of childhood and youth, I wrote this essay. I was excited by the desire to tell not so much about myself as about the past of one of the remote corners of the Azov steppe, about its harsh way of life and customs that have forever sunk into the past, about the cruelty and savagery of one part of its inhabitants and the lawlessness and downtroddenness of another. Much in this essay appears refracted through childish consciousness, but the main character of the memories is still not me, but my father, one of the many slaves of the former steppe. It was they, the unknown craftsmen and masters, who multiplied its generous gifts with their calloused, intelligent hands and made little use of them. It would be useful for contemporaries - the owners and builders of a new life - to find out what our steppe was like more than half a century ago, what kind of people lived in it and walked across its roads, what dreams of happiness they cherished... I will be pleased if, after reading real-life steppe stories, the present appears even more majestic - new people and their deeds, accomplished in those fields where the sadness and anger of the oppressed once matured. Author