The reign of Elena Glinskaya (1533–1538) had a significant impact on the further course of Russian political history. The complex political struggle of this time gave rise to contradictory assessments of it by both contemporaries and historians. The book contains a previously unpublished classic dissertation by A. L. Yurganov, defended in 1987 at the Moscow State Institute of Arts, as well as drawings from the Front Vault illustrating the reign of Elena Glinskaya. The government of Elena Glinskaya took important steps in centralizing the country, but the political history was not well known, it was studied in the light of the confrontation between the reactionary boyars and the progressive nobility. New research and sources, improving the methods of their analysis allowed the author to doubt the correctness of this concept. This allowed him to take a fresh look at social processes in Russia in the 16th century.