The book presents a fundamentally new look at the history of the turning point for Russia in the 18th century. The author's focus is on the modernization of Russian society and the state, for the first time considered as a single holistic process; an attempt is made to answer the questions: what is reform? is progressive political development possible for Russia? The history of reforms is one of the "eternal" themes of historiography, because to a large extent it is through reforms that people are changing the existing historical reality.