Abstract: The article is focused on the topic of revising Soviet history at the end of the 1980s. The subject of this research is the publications on historical topics in the newspaper " Moskovskiye Novosti" during the period of the Perestoika (1985-1991). During a short period of time (1987-1991), the newspaper's pages reflected a critical revision of the key stages of history: reformation of the 1920-1930s, pre-war and post-war policy of the USSR, the October Revolution, and foreign policy on the eve of the Second World War. Separate attention is paid to the particularities of covering the issue of political repressions, the so-called "Leniniana" and the new approaches to presenting the Great Patriotic War. The methodological base of this study is comprised of the quantitative and qualitative content-analysis of the publications on historical topics on the pages of the newspaper " Moskovskiye Novosti". The use of quantitative "mathematical" methods has allowed the author to discover additional, hidden information in these sources, to group the publications by main themes and to describe their quantitative dynamics.
The scientific novelty of this research lies in the fact that for the first time the publications on historical topics of the newspaper " Moskovskiye Novosti" during the period of the Perestoika have been subjected to a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative content-analysis. For the first time a series of documents was introduced into scientific circulation, coming from the private archive of Egor Yakovlev, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper " Moskovskiye Novosti" during the years of the Perestroika.
As a result of the conducted research, the author comes to the conclusion that the flow of publications on historical topics with new evaluations of the Soviet past had a double effect on the mentality of the Soviet people. The construction of a new reality of the Soviet past in the mass consciousness brought to the delusion of its proper history. The publications presented the results of sociological polls conducted at the end of the Perestroika, which reflect, for example, the abrupt change in the perception of the Soviet people of such important to the nation events as the Great Patriotic War. On the other hand, the authors of historic publications actively used previously inaccessible archival materials, for the first time introducing unique documents, thus formulating a completely different perception of the  Soviet historical heritage.