The new book of the famous historian, doctor of historical sciences, V.D. Kuznechevsky is dedicated to one of the most mysterious and little-studied crimes of the Stalin era - mass repression, including the physical destruction of the party and state elite in 1949-1953. A detailed analysis of previously classified archival documents and memoirs of the surviving participants in these tragic events made it possible not only to name the actual authors of the famous "LENINGRAD CASE," to reveal the true causes of its occurrence, to restore the true course of this process, but also to understand many acute problems of modern Russia, to shed light on why on June 12, 1990, the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR decided to declare Russia's independence from the Soviet Union.