In this book, the authors touch on one of the most mysterious places in Russian history - the Great Troubles of the 17th century. And they come to the conclusion that the Great Troubles were not at all the way the usual “school” version presents it, written by visiting historians commissioned by the House of Romanov in the 18th century. And the uprising led by Stepan Razin is not a “peasant” war (as is commonly believed), but a war with a powerful fragment of the former Russian-Horde empire - the Astrakhan kingdom. In addition, the authors touched upon the topic of Russian-Turkish ties and the use of Arabic in Rus'.