On the basis of extensive archival materials of a number of countries, the life path of one of the brightest leaders of the international socialist movement, the Bulgarian Krystyu (Christian) Rakovsky, a prominent centrist figure of the Second International, who became a Bolshevik after 1917, is first examined in detail. The authors traced the role of Rakovsky as the state leader of Ukraine - the chairman of its government, his courageous struggle for the true equality of the republic within the USSR, against the Stalinist course towards unification, revealed Rakovsky's attempts to Europeanize the USSR when he was plenipotentiary in Great Britain and France. The study expressively tells about Rakovsky's opposition to the establishment of Stalinist autocracy, being in exile, returning to Moscow to a secondary post and reprisal against him. Attention is paid to the personal life of the hero, his family and non-family ties, his family and friends.