What is the secret meaning of the Great Terror? Who was really behind the murder of Kirov? Was there a conspiracy against Stalin? Why did he unleash a "war against partocrats" and become a "gravedigger of the revolution"? Is there any reason to consider his death "the crime of the century"? What did Khrushchev keep silent about in his "closed" report? And why was the collapse of the Soviet Union historically inevitable? The latest creation by a Stalin-era historian answers the most pressing, contentious and painful questions of the Soviet past. As the first researcher who was lucky enough to get acquainted with unique archival materials from the classified funds of Stalin, Yezhov and Beria, Yuri Zhukov puts forward non-standard, sensational versions of key events of the 20th century.