The book by Sergei Lesnoy is not a history textbook sad in its calm monotony, where everything is sorted into shelves and usually does not awaken any emotions or thoughts. On the contrary: this book (already the third volume in our edition of “History of the Russians”) will give you a real kaleidoscope of extraordinary ideas and unsolved secrets, a collection of notes and essays that are not similar to each other - polemical, intense, not letting go of the reader’s attention even when the topic is still not finalized, not polished by the author. Sergei Yakovlevich Paramonov, who wrote under the pseudonym Sergei Lesnoy, lived in exile in Australia and published in Paris and Munich. In this and his other works, he touched on topics that are not exhausted even now, half a century later. Mysteries of the most ancient chronicles and the first Russian Christians; the “eternal” problem of the calling of the Varangians and the origin of the princely dynasty; interpretation of the Book of Vles, which still causes passionate debate; a unique system of fur money in Northern Europe, forgotten in other countries, but preserved in Rus'... This book is not evidence of past quests, but a message to the future, to those studies of ancient Russian culture that are still to come.