For the first time, an original biography of the largest political figure in Italian history of the 20th century, Benito Mussolini, is being published in Russian. Written by the English journalist K. Hibbert, a participant in the battles for the liberation of Italy, the book was first published in 1962. In the relaxed manner traditional for Western biographers, the author reveals many unknown pages of Mussolini’s personal life, the ambiguity and inconsistency of the personality of the Italian dictator, his ideological evolution and the vicissitudes of life ways. Prepared on the basis of a huge number of documents, memoirs, materials from personal meetings of the author with many Italian politicians of this period, the book recreates the realities and the very atmosphere of the historical era, which is associated with the formation of totalitarian regimes in Italy and other European countries.