Vysotsky, according to the memoirs of Vasily Aksyonov, treated the proposal "with enthusiasm" and transferred a large selection of poems for publication.
[2] The direct work on compiling the almanac took place in the apartment that previously belonged to Aksyonov's mother, Evgenia Ginzburg, who died shortly before the publication of "Metropol".
Vysotsky did not take direct part in the work on the almanac, but sometimes he came to the “editorial office” with a guitar, asking a humorous question upon entering the apartment: “Do they make counterfeit money here?”.
A media campaign called the works "vulgar", "low quality" and "pornographic", and was led in magazines by 1st Secretary of the Moscow organization of the Union of Writers of the USSR Felix Kuznetsov.
At the time, this meant "literary death", as the authors put, threatening their ability to publish, but also housing, since they lived in apartments provided by the Union.