The history of the Cossacks contradicts the accepted statements about the “eternal struggle of Rus' with the Steppe” and the “Tatar-Mongol yoke,” which is why they were probably allowed the right to exist only from the 15th–16th centuries. as “runaway slaves” from the Russian principalities. The life of those whom the brilliant Leo Tolstoy called “the creators of Russia, to whom she owes an enormous debt” was generally an undesirable topic in Soviet historical scholarship. The reason for this was the active participation of the Cossacks in the White Guard movement against Soviet power. But the most undesirable fact for the officially accepted history of Russia should be the participation of the Cossacks of the Golden Horde in the creation of Muscovy.