Livshits was a poet, translator and writer. He was arrested and executed in 1939 as an enemy of the people during Stalin's Great Terror. Published in the USSR in 1933, his memoirs testify to his preference for a group of Russian and Ukrainian avant-garde artists that were mainly ignored by art historians before 1970. Because of this, Livshits was compelled to record his own version of the events that occurred between 1910 and 1914. One of the most important aspects of the text are the literary portraits of the members of the (Cubo-)Futurist group Hylaea, particularly the brothers Burliuk, Alexandra Exter and the poets Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexei Kruchyonykh and Velimir Khlebnikov. Another part of the memoirs are Livshits's own thoughts on art itself. The discussions and disputes over the years are described by Livshits, revealing the characters of the protagonists in the development of the Russo-Ukrainian avant-garde, the actual historical background and the true initiators of the then-scandalous avant-garde happenings. The text, considered today to be the most important first-hand record on Russo-Ukrainian Futurism, is accompanied by photos, reproductions of paintings, sketches, posters and book illustrations by all the mentioned artists.

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