This book tells the stories of people who lived in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century: poets, bankers, femme fatales, hoaxers, politicians, film producers. Some of the heroes are well-known, some are forgotten, but even the celebrities here do not seem bronzed. Leo Tolstoy quarrels with his wife over money, and the first paparazzo secretly photographs him. Futurist poets go on tour across the country, perform in small clubs, organize street performances and happily provide grounds for tabloid headlines. Andrei Aksyonov, a teacher, history popularizer, and host of the podcast 'The Decline of an Empire,' provides a captivating account of the people, events, and phenomena of that period in our country when everything was changing before our eyes and no one could predict how it would all end in a few years.