The transition from pre-October Russia to the USSR was, as A. Solzhenitsyn put it, "not a continuation, but a fatal fracture of the ridge, which almost ended in complete national death." The history of the Soviet Union is the history of the transformation of Russia, a country no better and no worse than others, with its own peculiarities, but comparable in all respects with other European states, in the USSR - a phenomenon previously unknown to humanity. October 25, 1917 begins a new era. The history of Russia is over. Its place was taken by the history of the USSR. A new era begins for all mankind, because the consequences of the October Revolution were felt - and is felt - by the whole world.