The history of Kievan Rus arose as a commented retelling of the annals. Mostly it remains so today. But the chronicle - the Tale of Bygone Years - was created at the beginning of the XII century. Two and a half centuries separate her from the events from which she begins her story. Her messages are mostly legendary or completely invented, and the chronicler did not have any reliable sources that we would not know today. His story is built into a "tale of origin" characteristic of medieval chroniclers: where the ruling dynasty came from and how the people subject to it gained. This is an outstanding literary work, but a completely unreliable story. There is no reason to continue to base our knowledge of the past on it. What could the initial history of Russia look like without the Tale of Bygone Years? An attempt to answer this question is a new book by the famous Ukrainian historian Oleksiy Tolochko.