“In the biography of every country there are beautiful chapters that caress national pride, and ugly ones that you want to forget or mythologize. The era of Mongol rule in Russian history is the most unsightly. This is a severe trauma of historical memory: times of humiliation, collapse, loss of one’s own statehood. Writing and reading about the events of the 13th–15th centuries is at first a very depressing activity. However, the mood gradually changes. The process of wound healing and rebirth is exciting and fascinating. There is something in it from a Russian fairy tale: Rus' was sprinkled with dead water, then with living water - and it was resurrected and became stronger than before. The Tatar-Mongol conquest brought a lot of troubles and suffering, but at the same time it demonstrated the viability of the country, which withstood a terrible test and managed to create a new statehood instead of the old one that had perished.” We present to the attention of readers the second book of Boris Akunin’s project “History of the Russian State”, in which covers events from 1223 to 1462.