The subject of analysis in the article is the diary notes of a prominent poet and prose writer of the second half of the XXth century, an ex-prisoner of Stalin’s camps, a native of Voronezh region, A. V. Zhigulin (1930–2000). He wrote about Pushkin and Nekrasov’s traditions in the activities of Novy Mir journal and its editor-in-chief A. T. Tvardovsky (1910–1971).