The author fruitfully developed many areas of Classical studies, but in retrospect the most important for the research it was his occupation with contact zones between the Classical civilization and the Iranian world, and then the Middle East, caravan routes, and, in a broad sense, the periphery of the ancient world (‘Hellenism and Iranianism in the South of Russia’, ‘ Scythia and the Bosporus’, ‘Caravan Cities’, work with finds made in Dura-Europos, etc.). The steppes of the south of Russia, in the R.’s depiction, turned out to be a special region. Due to geographical conditions, it turned out to be a wide corridor, limited in the meridian, but not in the latitudinal direction, which led from the depths of Asia to the Danube. That corridor, open to all invasions, could not create a permanent population that could become the creator of a vibrant civilization, but, at the same time, that territory was open for contacts with the Mediterranean and the Middle East, and its resources stimulated the creation of large and strong state formations spreading to the north (shaping the main factor in the future history of Russia) and to the west. It was that very moment turning the Black Sea Region from the periphery of the cultural world, as was previously believed, into a region that has had a significant impact on the entire history of Europe. The book is an outline of the history of the Black Sea Region from the most ancient stages known by that time, to the Cimmerians and Scythians and Greek colonies. The exposition is brought to the end of Roman time. “To Rome and their energy, - the author says about the Greek cities of the Late Antiquity, - they were indebted to the fact that they existed for three centuries in a row, without subordination to neighbors, as independent state organisms. But these were no longer the cities that the Greeks had once founded here. A new population and a new culture were created. Two streams, Greek and Scythian-Sarmatian ones, merged until both were flooded with waves of Germanic, Turkic, and Slavic tribes to whom the future belonged. However, these new peoples inherited their culture from its old carriers and creators and carried it with them far to the north and west”.