Six years passed between the essay "Autocracy and War" (1905) and the novel "Eyes of the West" (1911). And despite the seemingly great development of time, these works by Joseph Conrad sound in unison. They are united by "Russian themes" and the author's study of political violence, which often uses high ideals to justify itself. Joseph Conrad, first in essay and then in novel form, tries to trace the degeneration of noble ideas into murderers. "Eyes of the West" is about an orphaned St. Petersburg student Kirill Razumov. He lives in a time of social unrest, when close circles of anarchists are plotting against a ruthless autocratic regime. They manage to deal a heavy blow by killing the head of the Repressive Committee - Mr. de P. In the vortex of these events lives Razumov, who would like to have a quiet hard-working life in the shadow of autocracy, but one coincidence destroys these dreams, pushing him to political intrigue, dating in Geneva and the difficulties of choice familiar to Raskolnikov. These texts, together with The Secret Agent and Nostromo, form the body of the author's so-called political novels. Translated into Ukrainian for the first time.
