Is there any reason to declare the 1917 revolution "the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century," and the Bolshevik policy "genocide of the Russian people"? Who were the Russians in the USSR - the "victim of the communist regime" or the backbone of the Empire, the object of monstrous experiments or the creators of the future? Are the researchers who call the Russians the "main victims" of the Soviet regime right? Was state Russophobia an accidental excess or the essence of the "red project"? Should the Stalinist era be considered a time of national humiliation and "walking through the agony" or the pinnacle of Russian history?