A collection of essays by Latvian politician and journalist Nikolai Kabanov reveals previously unknown pages in the history of the Latvian SSR. The text is written in a language accessible to the general public, but has a solid documentary basis: the author worked for more than a year to study the previously secret materials of the KPL party archive, now stored in the State Archives of Latvia (fond 101). In archival documents, unexpected perspectives were found both in the application of power practices of the 1970s - 1980s, and in the relations of ethnosocial groups on the territory of the Latvian SSR.