In the historiography of the social history of Eastern Europe at the end of the 18th - mid-19th centuries, the “peasant question” is of great importance. In Tatyana Litvinova’s monograph it is examined from the unusual perspective of “landowner truth.” This is not an apologetics for noble landowners, but an expansion of research optics. The research is focused on the intellectual dimension of social history. The author tries to describe the collective ideas of the nobility about the ideals of social interaction in the context of the development of new social roles by elite groups in the region. The author destroys the myth about the social egoism of the elite and its national betrayal of the interests of the Ukrainian people. Tatyana Litvinova - Ukrainian historian (Dnieper National University named after O. Gonchar).