“We prefer our own internal strife, our own unrest, say the Afghans, we prefer even to be completely beaten, but we do not want to have a ruler over us; we are all equal,” embassy adviser V.I. wrote in a report to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the people of Afghanistan. Ignatiev at the end of the 19th century. A study by Ukrainian and Russian authors Sergei Shumov and Alexander Andreev - a documentary description of the history of Afghanistan from the 1st millennium BC. to the beginning of the 21st century, built as a systematic body of evidence from contemporaries, as well as research by leading Western and Russian historians. Materials and documents are given in chronological order. Afghan lands were part of Bactria, the Achaemenid state, the Empire of Alexander the Great, the Seleucid state, the Greco-Bactrian kingdom , the Kushan Empire, the Hephthalite state, the Arab Caliphate, the Samanid state, the Ghaznavid and Ghurid powers, the Seljuk Turks, the Mongol-Tatar empires, the state of Timur, the Shaybanid state and the Persian Safavid kingdom, as part of the Mughal Empire. The first Afghan principalities of the Khattaks, Ghilzais and Abdalis of the 16th century, the creation of a sovereign empire by Durrani Ahmed Shah in the mid-18th century, the Anglo-Afghan wars of 1838-1840 and 1878-1880, the reign of Emir Abdurrahman in 1880-1901, Afghanistan gaining independence in 1919 year, the reign of Nadir Shah and Zahir Shah, the declaration of the country as a republic in 1973, the 1979 coup, the civil war in Afghanistan with the participation of the Soviet Army, the activities of B. Rabbani, G. Hekmatyar, A. Shah Masood, A.R. Dustom, the Taliban movement, the Northern Alliance, the armed conflict with the United States (the latter briefly) - all this is described in this study. The work uses the works of famous Russian and English historians who wrote about Afghanistan - S.N. Yuzhakova, V.A. Gurko-Kryazhin, A. Stanishevsky, P. Gerich, I.M. Reisner, General A.E. Snesarev, A. Hamilton; For the first time since 1901, part of the autobiography of the Emir of Afghanistan Abdurrahman Khan is published. The bibliography of this study contains all the main works related to the history of Afghanistan, published in Russian.