"Be sure to write down," Ilf often told his co-author, "everything passes, everything is forgotten. I understand - I don't want to write it down. I want to stare, not write down. But then you have to force yourself."
Facts, events, the smallest details, and most importantly, portraits of strange, eccentric, absurd and narrow-minded compatriots - all this, taken from notebooks and seemingly written for oneself, formed a colorful image of the "land of unafraid idiots", where the events of "The Twelve Chairs" will unfold " and "Golden Calf", a region where "the Caucasian ridge was created after Lermontov and according to his instructions", and an "uncultured person" sees in a dream "a bacterium in the form of a large dog", a region from which not a "great schemer" will ever escape ", nor its creators.