Annotation: Nikolai Pavlovich Antsiferov (1889 – 1958) was a prominent historian and literary critic, as well as the author of several classic works on the history of St. Petersburg. Antsiferov’s epistolary legacy has never before been published prior to the release of this book. With its wide variety of addressees from the scholar’s broad circle of acquaintances – from Vladimir Vernadsky to Boris Eichenbaum – Antsiferov’s letters provide a valuable source of knowledge about Russian culture of the 20th century. An especially important seam in these correspondences is the collection of letters Antsiferov sent to relatives and friends from the GULAG (1929 – 1933, 1938 – 1939): they constitute a unique human document from inside an an era that witnessed the total dehumanization of society. Taken as structured around inidvidual addressees, Antsiferov’s letters emerge as stylistically distinct narrative and figurative wholes. Taken all together, however, these letters turn into a literary monument to the realities of the period and to the fate of witnesses to the tragic events of the 20th century.