The name of Evgeny Nikolaevich Chirikov (1864-1932) is little known to the modern reader, and yet his works were extremely popular in the late XIX — early XX century. The topic of the Civil War became especially important for the writer. As a result: the appearance of the novel "The Beast from the Abyss", first published in 1924 in Czech (and two years later in Russian), when the writer was in exile. And while a stormy controversy broke out in the press around the novel, Chirikov wrote to his daughter with regret: "Did no one realize that my "poem of terrible years" has not a historical, but a purely psychological task of exposing the "beast" in a person, under the influence of fraternal strife... I would willingly publish my book in all languages, so that the peoples who did not survive the civil war turned away from Bolshevism..." This publication also includes an article by the author of "Smerdyakov of the Russian Revolution" about the role of Maxim Gorky in the events of that time.