Nikolayev A. A. Questions for the layman . Questions and doubts arising from the study of official history by an amateur . Much in the history of our country, and indeed of the world, needs to be clarified and adjusted. This is acknowledged by the historians themselves .. However, an updated story does not always become the property of a wide readership. For most of us, the secrets of our past will never be revealed. One of the reasons is that historians deliberately distort our history. It is well known that the school history course that we studied in school, and in other educational institutions, is simplified to the limit. In addition, the school history course is designed so that many facts, events and mysteries of our past are simply hidden from us. And it is precisely those facts that cause many questions and that radically change our worldviews that are hidden. It should also be noted that we study this subject at an insufficiently mature age ..... Nikolayev A. A. Questions for the layman . Questions and doubts arising in the study of official history by an amateur Much in the history of our fatherland, and of the whole world, needs to be clarified and adjusted. This is acknowledged by the historians themselves .. However, an updated story does not always become the property of a wide readership. For most of us, the secrets of our past will never be revealed. One of the reasons is that historians deliberately distort our history. It is well known that the school history course that we studied in school, and in other educational institutions, is simplified to the limit. In addition, the school history course is designed so that many facts, events and mysteries of our past are simply hidden from us. And it is precisely those facts that cause many questions and that radically change our worldviews that are hidden. It should also be noted that we study this subject at an insufficiently mature age ..... “I read the story of Solovyov .. All, according to the history of this, was the outrage in pre-Petrovsky Russia: cruelty, robbery, rule, rudeness, stupidity, inability to do anything... You read this story and involuntarily come to the conclusion that a number of outrages have occurred the history of Russia. But how did a series of outrages produce a great, unified state? This alone proves that the government did not produce history. But, besides, reading about how they robbed, ruled, fought, ruined (this is the only thing in history), you involuntarily come to the question : What did they do, and what did they do, and what did they do? Who made it ,? Who and how did all these people feed with bread? Who made brocades? dress, dresses, in which the kings and the boyars flaunted? Who caught black foxes and sables, The Ambassadors , Gold and Iron , Who made the horses ,? Bulls , rams, Who built the house (CM)? Palaces , Church, who carried goods? Who raised and bore these people of the same root? Who vouchsafed a religious shrine, Poetry of the People , Who did ,? that Bogdan Khmelnitsky was transferred to Russia, Not Turkey and Poland? . L. N. Tolstoy, cited in his notebooks (April 4, 1870)