In the fate of each state there are turning points, turning points that determine which path its further development will take. Among such fateful milestones that determined the future of Russia for centuries to come, without a doubt, stands the Time of Troubles - one of the brightest and at the same time the most controversial pages in the centuries-old history of the country, a chain of events that are still insufficiently studied, sometimes mysterious, and therefore not appreciated by descendants. Eternal feuds and feuds of vain boyars, territorial claims of greedy neighbors, a series of successive impostors called into question the very existence the kingdom of Moscow, and only the forced unity of the Russian people and their joint struggle against foreign invaders made it possible to save the unique Russian statehood and for the first time forced us to talk about the population of a multinational country as its single people.