About the book: 1949 / FROM THE COMPILERS The third, revised edition of the anthology is aimed at helping a secondary school teacher conduct classes on the history of the USSR from ancient times to the 17th century (inclusive). All material is distributed into 5 sections and 16 chapters and contains documents on economic, social, political, military and other issues reflecting the most important events in the history of our Motherland. The anthology also includes excerpts from the works of the great poets Rustaveli, Navoi, Nizami. The revised text again includes documents on the history of the ancient Slavs, Moscow and the Moscow Principality, documents about the heroic struggle of the Russian people against foreign invaders, about travel and geographical discoveries made by Russian people (“Walking” by Afanasy Nikitin, documents of S. Dezhnev), about the beginning of book printing in the Russian state, etc. The material is mainly arranged in chronological order, with the exception of the extensive XIV chapter, where individual documents are combined according to a thematic principle. Each section is provided with a brief bibliographic an index of the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism. Ancient Russian texts are given in the original and in translation into modern Russian to make it possible to use the anthology and to become familiar with Old Russian speech. Candidate of Historical Sciences V.A. took part in the selection of new material and verification of texts for this publication Alexandrov and S. O. Shmidt, who compiled an index of the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism. The compilers are grateful to Professors K. V. Sivkov and I. I. Polosin for a number of valuable comments, as well as the Department of History of the USSR of the Lenin State Pedagogical Institute, at the meeting of which the reader was discussed and approved.