The author, Alexey Nikolaevich Sokolov, is a shipbuilding engineer, a gunsmith with forty years of practical experience, in his work he talks about the complex path of development of a missile cruiser as a class of warship. The book contains information about the developments of Soviet designers in the field of creating a strike missile unit capable of operating autonomously in remote areas of the World Ocean, and presents rich graphic material, much of which was developed by the author personally. This monograph will not leave indifferent the reader interested in the Russian Navy, its past and present.