The famous book by the Italian writer and journalist Curzio Malaparte, “Technique of a Coup d'Etat,” was banned in our country for many years. In this book, the author analyzes the turbulent revolutionary events that were so frequent in the first quarter of the twentieth century. He gives his own classification of different types of coups d'etat, deliberately distracting from their ideological coloring and from the goals declared by their leaders. Malaparte's theoretical constructions may seem controversial, but the painful reaction to the book of some of the people mentioned in it (in particular Mussolini, Trotsky and Hitler) testifies about the author’s powers of observation and his desire for truthful coverage of events. Many of his statements turned out to be prophetic.