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When reviewers want to pay a big compliment to a critical or literary book, they say that it is "a pleasure to read" or reads like a novel. I do not believe that this is one of the main qualities that the author of such a book claims. Here the reviewers simply make a logical error - they exchange the places of our interest in a given issue with the slight pleasure that we can get from some fascinating reading, they translate a new concept into an older language. Therefore, I will not say that Georgi Konstantinov's book "An Extraordinary Friendship" (I have already heard such an opinion) is read easily, as a work of fiction. It simply reads as an interesting documentary, and in no case would I replace its content precisely as a documentary with the most skillful fiction construction. Incidentally, Georgi Konstantinov has also shown a certain fiction dexterity - he has arranged the documents at his disposal in such a way that the sequence of events and facts, their logical and plot connections, can be traced. But that is not what is important. It is important for us that we can feel the unique breath of authenticity, of personal testimony in history. The taste for the documentary, accurate, factual reproduction of historical events has been increasingly imposed in our country lately. It seems that we already prefer a letter, a memory of a living participant in events to any romantic imagination. Fiction seems to be starting to lose in a competition with history; History is increasingly imposing itself and dominating our consciousness, it seems to us more extraordinary and more fantastic than the greatest flights of fantasy, it seems to have the ambition to displace art, philosophy, and "mythology". Haven't you noticed that recently the memoir is the most sought-after, most preferred reading material? Of course, in the world historical process, and especially in our development since 9. IX., we will find many explanations for this "demythologizing", for this striving to unveil, deheroize, "historicize" history, for this desire to see how it was made, but these reflections would take us too far.