Russia was almost unknown in the West before Ivan the Terrible. But when “astonished Europe saw a huge empire at its side” (K. Marx) under the control of an intelligent and decisive Moscow Tsar, Western countries began the first black PR campaign in history against Russia. The main weapon of this campaign was the Polish spy and defector to the West, Prince Kurbsky, who wrote slanderous memoirs about the political and social life of the Muscovite kingdom. 450 years have passed since then, but right up to the present day, numerous followers of Kurbsky have used his “works” to denigrate Russia, the Russian people and Russian rulers. This book exposes anti-Russian slander and provides sensational conclusions: the historical image of Ivan the Terrible was falsified by agents of Western influence, starting from Kurbsky and Karamzin and ending with some modern historians.