The new book of the famous Russian historian, publicist and chronicler of the formation of the new Russian statehood Nikolai Zenkovich covers the year 1996, which has gone down in recent history as the beginning of the end of the Yeltsin era. Readers will learn the truth about Boris Yeltsin's victory in the 1996 presidential election. About whether his main competitor Gennady Zyuganov really won the elections in the first round, but gave the victory to Yeltsin. The circumstances of the denunciation by the State Duma of the Belovezhskaya agreements of 1991 on the dissolution of the USSR, the history of the scandalous removal of a box from under the copier with 500 thousand dollars and the subsequent resignation of Korzhakov, Barsukov and others are described in a new way.