The book “On the Racrums”, that is, at the crossroads, at the crossroads, reproduces the events of the 16th century - the era of the final formation of the empire in the last fourteen years of the reign of Ivan the Terrible. The defeat of free Novgorod, the raids of the Crimean Khan, the war with Poland for Livonia, the abolition of the oprichnina, the fierce disputes tearing apart the Orthodox Church - all this is depicted impartially and in detail, with scrupulous accuracy. The characters in the chronicle speak a language as close as possible to the real Russian language of those times. Almost all of them actually existed. And what happens to them on the pages of the book is most often not made up. The reader not only immerses himself in the reality of Muscovite Rus' as it was almost five centuries ago, in its conflicts and mentalities, but, in essence, lives in it, independently developing his own attitude to what is happening. Such is the power of the talent of Friedrich Gorenstein (1932–2002), the greatest Russian writer of the last third of the twentieth century.