The book of the outstanding Russian historian A. A. Zimin (1920-1980) "The Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible," published by the first edition in 1964, the only chronologically organized and systematized presentation of the events of one of the darkest eras in the history of medieval Russia, which immediately took place among classical works about the past of Russia. The second edition of the book, which received the author's name "Oprichnina," was conceived immediately after the first.