Dmitry Likhachev is an outstanding scholar of the 20th century. His creative legacy is extremely extensive and diverse; his research, journalistic articles, and notes addressed various aspects of cultural history—from ancient Russian literature, in the study of which he made an enormous contribution, to the garden-and-park styles of the 18th–19th centuries. This book brings together articles and notes by D. S. Likhachev from different years. Extracted by the author from notebooks and going far beyond “pure scholarship,” these materials are unified by a single underlying theme—Russia’s historical past and future. In them, the author’s personality is revealed not only as an outstanding scholar, but also as a true citizen, never remaining indifferent to events around him, and becoming a moral symbol of the era.