Alexandra Yakovlevna Brushtein began writing her autobiographical trilogy "The Road Goes on into the Distance" in 1956. 72-year-old, deaf and almost blind, Brushtein wrote a book whose heroine was herself, but at the age of nine.
Sashenka lives in Vilna (now Vilnius) with her mother and father, a cook, a nurse and teachers and is preparing to enter the Institute for Noble Maidens - this is where the book begins. With encyclopedic accuracy, almost 50 years later, Brushtein recreates a city that will survive two world wars and the Holocaust. This accuracy concerns not only the details of everyday life, but also the experiences of people at the end of the 19th century, who already felt the approach of changes - political, social, technical.
All the events described in the book are reliable, each character - regardless of their place and weight in the book - has a real prototype, whose first and last name in most cases they bear. This allowed Maria Gelfond, the author of the study, to find in the archives and include in the text of the comments not only confirmation of the person's existence, but also to trace his history, to learn how he lived before, during and after the events described in the book. And this completeness and thoroughness of the commentary makes it possible to publish it separately, without the commented text.
The book you are holding in your hands is the first part of the project, it includes a commentary on two stories of the trilogy - "The Road Goes into the Distance..." and "At the Dawn Hour".
Compilation, editing, design of the series Ilya Bernstein
2nd edition, corrected
For middle and high school age.