The presented book is perhaps the only experience of psychoanalytic research into evil, careerism, and lust for power.
The author offers a kind of political-technology analysis of the life and rapid career of Count A. A. Arakcheev, who managed to become a favorite at the courts of Paul I and Alexander I, effectively concentrating in his hands control over the State Council, the Committee of Ministers, and his own imperial chancellery.
As the author shows, Arakcheev had the psychology of a slave—who bends before the powerful and destroys those beneath him, a slave whose cruelty had no equal among his compatriots.