Revolutions do not happen unexpectedly, empires do not perish out of the blue. The main lesson we can learn from the 1917 revolution is an understanding of why the emperor and his entourage, in a situation that required radical internal reforms, not only did not dare to carry out these reforms, but, on the contrary, tried with all their might to reverse the country's development, strengthening reliance on ‘traditional values’, Orthodoxy and the army. Chapter by chapter, through the living stories of people, Mikhail Zygar shows how the empire is steadily moving towards disaster and why nothing can save it. The main character of this book is Russian civil society.