V.F. Kormer is one of the brightest and most iconic figures in Moscow life of the 1960s–1970s. Trained as a mathematician, by vocation he was a writer and philosopher. At a superficial glance, a “idle lounger,” he was inwardly focused on making sense of what was happening. Because of these circumstances, the KGB did not leave him unnoticed. The novel «Inheritance» had no chance of being published in the Soviet Union, since it portrayed the life of anti-Soviet intellectuals. That’s why only thanks to samizdat were the first readers able to learn about this book. Later the novel was published in Paris (edited by Yu. Kublanovsky), but the complete author’s version came out in the journal «Oktyabr» in 1990.