This book, like the entire “Free School” project, began with a call from Seryoga from Samara to the “Parental Question” program, which I host on Radio “KP”: – Bring back Soviet education to us! Such requests have been received more and more frequently in recent years. And at some point I decided, first of all for myself, to figure out how we arrived at the current education system? What is she like? Still Soviet, tough and united - or updated, modern and, as they liked to say in the 2000s, modernized? What did the reforms of the 90s and 2000s lead to? And is it really possible to return that nostalgic Soviet school? The answers to these questions were formulated in conversations with those who in different years determined the country’s educational policy - deputy prime ministers, ministers, their deputies, heads of Rosobrnadzor and regional education systems, famous teachers .