“The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” is a book that was presented to Vitaly Zakrutkin by the Sovremennik publishing house from Moscow. It collaborated with Zakrutkin and published several of his works, including “Notes from the Caucasus”, “Mother of the Human”, and “Floating Stanitsa”. In 1989, it published the writer’s unfinished story “On the Golden Sands” in his memory.

Employees of the Sovremennik publishing house often came to Kochetovskaya to discuss their work with the writer, clarify cooperation plans, present Zakrutkin with published books, and congratulate him on festive occasions. They also brought him books by other writers.

In the summer of 1975, Vitaly Zakrutkin welcomed guests who came with a special gift — a collector’s edition of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”. It turned out that in 1934 the Academy publishing house issued a unique edition of this monument of Old Russian literature, illustrated by the famous Palekh artist Ivan Golikov. More than 40 years later, the Sovremennik publishing house reissued the book with Golikov’s illustrations.

In this book, the font is stylized as Old Russian, and the introduction is made in bright red. The ornamented headpiece features the entire color palette and depicts two fighting bogatyrs.

Vitaly Zakrutkin repeatedly turned to the book “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”. He delivered lectures on its history and its artistic merits, quoting the text in both modern Russian and Old Russian.

“The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” is a literary monument of Ancient Rus dedicated to a failed raid of Russian princes against the Polovtsians in 1185 which was led by Igor Svyatoslavich, Prince of Novgorod-Seversk. The genre of the work remains unclear: the definition of “poem” often found in literature is applied in an arbitrary manner. The tale combines elements of “glory” and lamentation, folklore images, Christian and pagan elements. The text alternates between a narrative, monologues of the characters, and the author’s lyrical digressions with an overview of Russian history.

For Vitaly Zakrutkin, “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” was one of those books that made an indelible impression on the writer and that he considered an unsurpassed masterpiece throughout his life.