V. A. Rokhlin and D. A. Gudkov against the background of Hilbert's 16th problem (according to their correspondence in 1971–1982)

The story of the friendship and cooperation between Vladimir Abramovich Rokhlin and the Nizhny Novgorod mathematician Dmitry Andreevich Gudkov during the last period of Rokhlin’s mathematical biography, when he worked in the topology of real algebraic varieties, in which he received remarkable results. The paper is based on the correspondence of 1971–1982 preserved in Gudkov's archive containing 15 letters by V. A. Rokhlin and 8 letters by D. A. Gudkov.