Even experts in Russian history and historians primarily remember and appreciate the multivolume works of N. M. Karamzin and S. M. Solovyov. The name of Nikolai Alekseevich Polevoy (1796-1846), an outstanding historian, writer and playwright, was undeservedly forgotten. Meanwhile, his main scientific work, "The History of the Russian People," is the brightest phenomenon of Russian culture. As was customary then in Russian historiography, N. A. Polevoy builds a book on specific reigns and reigns, slowly and sincerely telling about the great and mournful events in the life of the Fatherland.