About the book: year / F. F. Raskolnikov (real name Ilyin) was born in St. Petersburg in January 1892 in the family of a priest: mother - Antonina Vasilievna Ilyina, daughter Major General of Artillery V. M. Ilyin, - was in a civil marriage with the protodeacon of the Sergievsky All Artillery Cathedral Fyodor Aleksandrovich Petrov. Brother of the famous Bolshevik revolutionary A. F. Ilyin-Zhenevsky, one of the organizers of the chess movement in the USSR. In 1910, a student Economics department of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute joined the RSDLP. He worked for the Bolshevik newspapers Zvezda, Pravda, and Voice of Pravda. In 1912, he was arrested and accused of anti-state activities; after trial, he was deported abroad. In 1913, he was amnestied in connection with the 300th anniversary of the royal house of Romanov. After the February Revolution, he headed the Kronstadt newspaper “Voice of Truth”, was the chairman of the Kronstadt Council. Actively participated in the revolutionary events of 1917 in Kronstadt and St. Petersburg. Since 1918 - Deputy People's Commissar for Naval Affairs , member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Eastern Front, member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. In 1919–1920 - Commander of the Volga-Caspian military flotilla; in 1920–1921 - Commander of the Baltic Fleet. In 1921–1923 - Plenipotentiary Envoy to Afghanistan. In 1924–1930 - executive editor of a number of magazines, the Moscow Worker publishing house, etc. In 1930–1938. - Plenipotentiary Representative in Estonia, Denmark, Bulgaria. In 1938 he was recalled from Bulgaria, but due to the threat of arrest, he refused to return to the USSR. He accused I.V. Stalin of mass repressions. Declared in absentia an “enemy of the people”, “outlawed” and deprived of Soviet citizenship. He died under unclear circumstances in September 1939 - he fell from the window of a French hospital in Marseille. Buried in Nice. Rehabilitated in 1963. Author of the books “Kronstadt and Peter in 1917”, “Stories of Midshipman Ilyin” and others. The first edition of the book “Kronstadt and Peter in 1917”, published in 1925, in 1937. was included in the lists for mandatory removal from libraries and subsequent destruction. “Open Letter to Stalin” was first published in the Paris newspaper “New Russia” in 1939.