The book “The Short Life of Paul I” offered to the reader continues the historical series “Russia - the path through the centuries” and illuminates the personality and short reign of Emperor Paul I, which are ambiguously assessed by his contemporaries and historians. A knight with a noble soul or a soulless and eccentric ruler? What was Pavel Petrovich, the son of Catherine the Great, like? What did Russia gain and what did Russia lose during the short century of his rule? And why are the opinions of contemporaries and historians about the personality of this Russian emperor so contradictory? Scientists of our time, people who knew Paul well, his contemporaries, like-minded people and his irreconcilable opponents argue about him on the pages of this book.