Russia before Ivan the Terrible in the West was almost unknown. But when "amazed Europe saw a huge empire at its side" (K. Marx) under the control of an intelligent and decisive Moscow tsar, the Western countries began the first ever black PR company against Russia. The main tool of this company was the Polish spy and defector to the West, Prince Kurbsky, who wrote slanderous memoirs about the political and social life of the Moscow kingdom. 450 years have passed since then, but up to the present day, numerous followers of Kurbsky have used his "developments" to denigrate Russia, the Russian people and Russian rulers.