This collection of articles reveals the dramatic events in the history of Soviet mathematics, dating back to the 1940s and 1950s. Dedicated to an out standing Russian mathematician and philosopher, Andrei Ivanovich Lapin (1922—1996), they focus on the period of his imprisonment for “antiSoviet propaganda” in 1950—1952. The paper by lurii Krivonosov presents a number of documents pertaining to that term: a letter on the importance of research performed by Lapin in prison, signed by the Soviet Academy of Sciences’ President A. I. Nesmeianov and its Chief Secretary A. V. Topchiev on 5 March 1952; the authorization to publish the results of that work, signed by L. P. Beriia, G. M. Malenkov, and N. A. Bulganin on 8 March 1952; a confirmation of this desicion, sent by lu. A. Zhdanov to M. A. Suslov on 3 April 1952; and a letter recommending the publicati on of Lapin’s work (under a fictitious name!), signed by M. Suslov, S. Kruglov, and A. Nesmeianov on 25 April 1952. These documents are commented on in the article by Sergei Demidov; the rest two papers present the memoirs of Lapin by his longtime friend and teacher Igor Shafare vich and his spouse Izabella Bashmakova. The collection reveals the enorextent of centralization characteristic of the Stalinist state (the question of publishing the work of a PhD candidate was discussed by three members of the country’s chief political authority, the Politburo!); at the time, it shows that Soviet citizens were far from becoming the “cogs and wheels” of a unified oppressive mechanism envisaged by its creator.