1953. One of the darkest dates in Russian history. A year of political catastrophe that forever broke the fate of the country. The year of the death of I.V. Stalin. This tragedy was so enormous that it overshadowed all other events of the “fatal 53rd” - the coup d’etat, carried out just one hundred days after the Leader’s funeral, remained in its shadow. Stalin's posthumous will was violated - his legal successor, the only one he considered worthy of inheriting power, was arrested by the conspirators and killed without trial. Then the victors rewrote history, got rid of evidence, flooded the archives with forgeries that discredited their rival - so that three years later they could launch an attack on the Stalinist legacy itself, initiating destructive processes that ultimately led to the fall of the USSR - A new book by a famous historian - fresh, largely unexpected a look at the Soviet past, a detailed analysis of the catastrophic events of the fateful 1953, the solution to the turning point in Russian history