The publication of selected works by the remarkable writer Vladimir Sharov would be incomplete without the collection of essays “The Temptation of Revolution.” A historian by training, a specialist in the Russian Middle Ages (his PhD thesis is devoted to the Time of Troubles in Russia at the beginning of the 17th century), Vladimir Sharov and in his fiction texts, both in journalism and in science, he remains faithful to several main themes for him. The most important of them is the genesis of the supreme power in Russia. The emergence of the vertical of power, its relationship with the people, the participation of the authorities in the formation of the Russian religious mentality - these are the issues that the author brilliantly solves on the pages of his historical essays.