The article is devoted to the creative history of
«attempts of confession» by V. P. Astafiev «From the quiet
world». The author compares the canonical edition included
in the thirteenth volume of the collected works by the writer
himself, and several early versions stored in the Manuscript
Department of the Pushkin House. The main conclusion: the
analyzed text testifies to the awakening under the influence
of the ancestral memory of the spiritual energy that directed
the development of his personality in the Orthodox, Christian
direction, the great sorrow demanded confession and repentance, brave self-condemnation, giving the right to prayer, to
the request for the future for his «exhausted, torn, spent» people for their loved ones.