The book of the modern historian and writer Boris Kerzhentsev is dedicated to the turning point of 1650-1750, when the Russian Empire was born on the ruins of the Moscow state. Over these hundred years, the appearance of the country has changed beyond recognition. There was a real revolution in the spiritual, economic and social spheres. The main signs of the era: the church schism and the emergence of the Old Believers, the establishment of serfdom and peasant wars, the total pacification of culture, the strengthening of Western European influence and the suppression of the national identity of the Russian people.