Elena Osokina's book is, without exaggeration, an intellectual detective story. The Russian icon is the main character of this book - the center of attraction for the actions of the authorities, museum workers, traders and buyers. One of the paradoxes of Soviet history is that the creators of the “non-market” planned economy became the founders of the world market of Russian icons. At the turn of the 1920s–1930s, through their efforts, a colossal export icon fund was collected, a grandiose advertising campaign was organized - the first Soviet foreign exhibition, which presented the world with new antique goods in all its splendor, as well as connections with world antique dealers were established and the first sales of collections were held for frontier The search for currency for industrialization resulted in the development of world interest in the Russian icon. The book tells about the history of museums and people (fate treated some of them favorably, others mercilessly), how the grandiose icon collection of the State Museum Fund was created and liquidated, who and how selected icons for export, how many icons were sold Russian museums (Tretyakov Gallery, Historical, Russian...), whether the sold icons were fakes and whether there was a “Stalinist gulag of icon painters”, as well as how they tried to sell the icon exhibition in the USA, and about the fate that awaited the icons after the sale. The book is written on a huge amount of material collected by the author in the archives of Russia, Europe and the USA.