In his declining years, having completed the major works of his life and settled in Sergiev Posad, closer to St. Sergius, Lev Alexandrovich Tikhomirov began writing his memoirs, collected under the general title "Shadows of the Past." Everything that passed before the eyes of this remarkable man over the course of more than seven decades of his life was to be reflected in his memoirs. Lev Alexandrovich began them in 1918, amidst the triumphant revolutionary spirit. He intended to write approximately eighty essays.

These are memoirs written by a Christian writer, whose goal is not to settle scores with his friends-enemies, with his past, but to create a kind of documentary cross-section of the era, its spiritual moods and social aspirations.

The narrative alternates scenes from the "family chronicle" with stories about Russian and foreign public figures. Among them are revolutionaries Mikhailov, Perovskaya, Khalturin, and Plekhanov; "shadows of the past" of revolutionary and conservative France; Vladimir Solovyov; and Russian conservatives K. N. Leontyev, P. E. Astafyev, A. A. Kireyev, and others.