Historian and journalist VA Bilbasov stories Catherine II dedicated the rest of his life, after the government shut down in 1883 for "damaging the direction" of the famous newspaper "The Voice," which he edited for 12 years. The collected materials are allowed to submit a historian of Russian society the image of Catherine, a woman, quite different from the commonplaces of apocryphal stories generated by long ban on access to personal documents of the Empress. The first volume of the book was published in 1890 and was immediately praised the historians and the reading public. However, the second volume (1891) has been withdrawn from sale and destroyed by the censor on the personal instructions of Alexander III. Wrath of the Emperor caused Bilbasova published materials about the coup in 1762 and the death of deposed from the throne of Peter III. Despite the fact that Bilbasov using all available domestic and foreign sources to prove the innocence of Catherine in her husband's death, the disclosure of many details of the life of the imperial family, it was considered inappropriate. The author had to make significant cuts and the withdrawal of their labor to the book was published. In subsequent years, the reader's interest in the forbidden books continued unabated. Finally, in 1900 Bilbasova work was published in Berlin in Russian the full author's version without censorship omissions.