The article shares papers from the family archive of Prof. Maria Mikhailova, namely memoirs of her grandmother Ksenia Pavlovna Pyshkina, former head of the library at the Sverdlovsk district in Moscow (now Chekhovka), who talks about her childhood and adolescence in Georgia’s Tiflis, and offers a commentary on the period between the 1920–1930-ies. The extracts from the memoirs discussing this last stage are of special interest as they recreate the unique atmosphere of this time through real life stories about outstanding people Ksenia Pyshkina had known. Most importantly, these papers convey a sense of anxiety and pain associated with the atmosphere of suspicion and repression which literally haunted many people at that time. Meanwhile, the reader should understand that even such a terror-stricken life was full of joy. And these memoirs are a good illustration of this.