In 1926, the Frankfurter Zeitung newspaper invited the renowned Austrian writer and journalist to travel to Soviet Russia. Roth set out on his journey in July 1926. His first reports are full of vivid impressions and are written following his travels, but he soon turned to topics that fascinated him, exploring them using Soviet material.
This book was translated at the First Volga Translation Residency, organized by the Smena Center for Contemporary Culture and the Peredelkino House of Creativity. Translators from Kazan, Volgograd, Astrakhan, Minsk, Moscow, and St. Petersburg translated Joseph Roth's essays in the summer of 2023 at the National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan and on the island town of Sviyazhsk.

The book was published in collaboration with Ad Marginem, Smena, libra, and the Peredelkino House of Creativity.