The book before the reader is truly poignant and topical, although, at first glance, it raises questions about our past. What was the background of the terrible Leningrad affair of 1949-1950 for Russian party cadres? Why were almost all the investigators who led him shot, and after Stalin’s death? Why is the topic of Stalinist repression heard everywhere, but very little is written about the brutally suppressed wave of popular uprisings during Khrushchev’s “thaw” and the Soviet “Bloody Sunday” in Novocherkassk in 1962? And they are completely silent about J.V. Stalin’s reluctance to turn the USSR into a raw materials donor for other countries. Alexei Chichkin’s book quite convincingly refutes the common cliché that, they say, “everything was fine” in the economy, foreign trade and the internal political system of the USSR, but then Gorbachev came to power and destroyed the country. It turns out that only 5-6 years were enough for such powerful states and structures as the USSR and the CPSU to sink into oblivion? 20 years have passed since the collapse of the USSR, but the consequences of this event cannot but affect Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union to this day.