The book presents an unconventional version of the origin of the “East-West” confrontation, at the forefront of which Russia was and is. The common belief that this country’s natural resources, which Western moneybags have their eye on, is to blame for everything, sounds unconvincing. According to the author, the onslaught on the East, like Russophobia in general, is a continuation of the West’s policy towards Byzantium, one of whose successors was Russia - the “Third Rome” in the words of the monk Philotheus. Having assumed the role of a political leader, Europe did not get rid of an inveterate provincial disease - pathological hatred of the imperial center, the personification of which in its eyes after Byzantium was Russia. The main instrument for redividing the world was, according to the author, the crusades. Their main goal, as G. Katyuk convincingly proves, was not at all the protection of Christian shrines, but to force Constantinople to accept the Western model of Christianity and recognize the primacy of the Western Church over the Eastern. But at that historical stage, the West achieved only partial success - the fall of the Empire and the Great Church Schism. The search for a final solution to the “Eastern Question” fell to the lot of modern crusaders.