What is this book about? The short answer is about commemorative coins. But we can also say that this book is about the thousand-year history of our Fatherland, about the creation of Russian statehood, about retreats and victories along this path, about the life and work of outstanding people who increased the glory of their Motherland. A lot is embodied in commemorative coins. Commemorative coins are a sign of the times, but also a sign and a symbol of state history, its monetary system. Coins change, their appearance and symbolism change, but they remain - in memory, in the collections of numismatists. It is worth considering how this book is structured. The first chapter gives a brief outline of the minting of pre-revolutionary and Soviet commemorative coins; in the second, which is a series of essays, the authors paid attention to the thematic content of commemorative coins, i.e. those events that led to their release into circulation at one time. At the end of the book there is a catalog of commemorative coins. The volume of this book does not make it possible to more fully cover this or that event, moreover, this is the task of specialists. The authors hope that this publication will introduce a wide range of readers to commemorative coins and serve as a stepping stone to mastering the historical discipline of numismatics.