In the modern history of Russia there is hardly a figure who evokes so many contradictory assessments. Sociological polls conducted today have shown that the majority’s attitude towards the “father of Russian reforms” is sharply negative; the name Gaidar still causes rejection or even rejection among many. But is this fair? And don’t we attribute to him something that he did not do, forgetting, on the contrary, about what he did for the country? After all, one way or another, we live in a world largely created by Gaidar in just a few months of his stay in power, and much of what seems self-evident and ordinary to us became so precisely as a result of the reforms carried out under his leadership. The authors of the book strive to present objectively and without embellishment the biography of a man who overnight changed the lives of millions of people in our country.