The diary of P. A. Valuev, Minister of Internal Affairs Alexander II, is of great interest not only for specialists - historians and literary scholars, but also for a wide range of readers. It covers in some detail the government activities of 1861-1876. This period in the history of Russia, as you know, is full of extremely important historical events. The abolition of serfdom, carried out in 1861, meant the establishment of a capitalist formation in Russia. In turn, peasant reform forced the government, especially under the influence of a new wave of "social excitement and revolutionary onslaught," to carry out a series of transformations that meant a step towards turning Russia into a bourgeois monarchy.