New book by St. Petersburg writer and researcher N.M. Konyaeva is dedicated to the political events of 1918, the “shortest” year for Russia. This year is memorable not only and not so much for the transition to the Gregorian chronology system. It remained in Russian history as the period of formation and strengthening of the Bolshevik dictatorship, as the time of transformation of the “Red Terror” into a targeted state policy. The dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, the creation of the Cheka, the gradual destruction by the Bolsheviks of other parties, including the left, the murder of the German ambassador Mirbach, the Left Socialist Revolutionary rebellion, the murder of Volodarsky and Uritsky, the villainous destruction of the Royal Family, the assassination attempt on Lenin - these are the main episodes of this bloody epic. All the “oddities” and “inconsistencies” in the behavior of Lenin, Trotsky, Dzerzhinsky, Sverdlov, and other big and small “leaders” are explained by the anti-national and anti-people policy of the “Bolshevik-internationalists”, their desire to spark a Civil War and destroy Russian statehood. The book is based on extensive documentary material.