The book "Tragic Fates" opens a new series of the publishing house "OLMA-PRESS" - "How it really was." The author, journalist Nikolai Andreev, explores the fate of extraordinary people - our compatriots, whom time and circumstances have tried to break. Here are some of those who walked the skating rink of our cruel century: scientist and humanist Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, war hero and spy Oleg Penkovsky, football player Eduard Streltsov, Soviet general and symbol of the struggle for the independence of Chechnya Dzhokhar Dudaev, village sages Ivan Snezshchikov and Ivan Khudenko... It is not always possible to determine exactly what caused the tragedy - whether fate ordered it that way, if life just developed like that...