In Olga Forsch's novel, the panorama of an epoch beats at us in nine "waves". The Russian ship of fools that sails through the years is the "House of Arts" created by Gorky, in which painters, philosophers and writers lived together with workers and secured their existence during the civil war years. This "ship of fools" is animated by the madness of art: its passengers are people in the years after the October upheaval and until the dissolution of the house in 1923, who try to outdo each other in boldness and progressiveness. The first "waves" revolve around contemporary events, introducing us to the personnel of the "Silver Age" of Russian poetry, Boris Pilnyak, Alexander Blok, Viktor Shklovsky and others, in disguise; the poetry of Anna Akhmatova forms the background music to these avant-garde contests. The following waves tell about authors and their works. In an associative and episodic narrative kaleidoscopically assembles time. Russian Ship of Fools has its own destiny. Olga Forsch was certainly no dissident, but the novel disappeared after its publication in 1931: it was neither included in the later complete edition of Olga Forsch's works nor published during her lifetime.