The book is devoted to the political history of Russia in the second half of the XX - beginning of the XXI century. It explores the processes of evolution of power in the USSR, the peculiarities of the organization of its functioning, decision-making mechanisms in the country's foreign and domestic policy. The activities on public administration of Stalin, Beria, Malenkov, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov were analyzed in detail and consistently. A special place in the book is occupied by the problem of the collapse of the USSR, a set of reasons - legal, economic, socio-political and psychological, which led to an unexpected ending.