D. L. Mordovtsev, popular in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. historian and fiction writer, left a huge literary heritage. The novels collected in this book belong to the best works of the writer. Their main idea is the struggle between two Russias: the pre-Petrine country, which lost a lot during “more than one century of hibernation, stagnation...”, and the Europeanized empire created by the will of the great tsar. Although the plots of the novels are familiar to the reader, the author enriches our understanding with the most interesting material.

“In that explosion that took place in the Kremlin, the “old principle” was reflected, especially dangerous for everything alien, foreign, “not our own”; today are “boyars”, and tomorrow, who will guarantee? Tomorrow, perhaps, the “Germans” will become the subject of persecution. The Germans... knew that everything that happened today in Moscow or the Kremlin was directed by an invisible hand from the same Kremlin, and they knew, they saw this white, plump hand and kissed it more than once..."