The image of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is lovingly reconstructed in the three stories which comprise the present volume. Each of them is a valuable contribution to our Soviet Leniniana, each revealing a different facet of Lenin's personality. In A Remarkable Year Maria Prilezhayeva tells about that last year of Lenin's Siberian exile during which he wrote a number of important theoretical works and drew up the programme of the Bolshevik Party. Emmanuel Kazakevich in his The Blue Notebook studies the dialectics of Lenin's thought, while Marietta Shaginyan in Retracing Lenin's Steps dwells on the vitality of Lenin's teaching, its timelessness ... The purpose of these three stories is: “ To disclose to readers the entire, immeasurable wealth of Lenin's ideas ” (M. Shaginyan).
Maria Pavlovna Prilezhayeva was a Russian Soviet children's author, literary critic and the Soviet Union of Writers official, best known for her novel The Life of Lenin which earned her the Nadezda Krupskaya RSFSR State Prize in 1971 and later the Order of Lenin.