Based on a wide range of sources, the monograph substantiates the concept according to which in 1861-1905 the government of the empire - in many ways consciously - tried to implement an anti-capitalist utopia, the first in our history. Utopia that in the industrial era it is possible to be a "distinctive" great power, that is, to influence the fate of the world, in principle rejecting and ignoring what the competitors have achieved success due to, and first of all, the civil legal system and freedom of entrepreneurship. The natural consequence of this policy was a humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, which provoked the 1905 revolution, which put the country on the brink of disaster.