In memory of the descendants, the Grand Duke of Moscow and All Russia Vasily III was in the shadow of his great father, Ivan III, and son, Ivan the Terrible. Meanwhile, the time of his reign (1505-1533) occupies a special place in the history of Russia. During these years, the last large destinies were liquidated, the Pskov land the Ryazan principality were finally annexed to Moscow, Smolensk was conquered; Russia gradually turned into the Orthodox Moscow kingdom. The author of the book, the famous St. Petersburg historian A.I. Filyushkin, reveals many secrets in the life of Russia at that time and in the biography of Vasily III himself. Here are his relationship with his first wife Solomonia Saburova, and the mysterious story of a ghost boy, allegedly born by Solomonia in a monastery dungeon after being forcibly tonsured a nun, and history the "discovery" of Russia by Europeans, which contemporaries likened to the discovery of the New World in the same decades. Many contemporaries of Vasily III appear on the pages of the book - the learned monk Maxim the Greek and hegumen Joseph Volotsky, whose name is associated with a whole direction in Russian social thought; Prince-adventurer Mikhail Glinsky and the Crimean Khan Mohammed-Girey, who almost won the laurels of the ruin of Russia and the "second Batu," as well as many other characters in Russian and European history of the first third of the 16th century.