Anton Gorsky's book is dedicated to debunking persistent myths about the Russian Middle Ages, which are not only ingrained in our minds, but also included as facts in school textbooks. But if you reread the sources, you can find that the transfer of the nominal capital of Russia from Kyiv to Vladimir did not take place under Yuri Dolgoruk in the XII century, but a century later under Alexander Nevsky and his descendants. The nicknames of the Old Russian princes, as a rule, were not given by contemporaries, and Yaroslav became Wise only at the end of the 19th century. Dmitry Donskoy always, even after the Battle of Kulikovo, considered the khan's power as legitimate. The word "serf," which at the end of the 15th-17th centuries the boyars called themselves in their address to the sovereign, goes back to the Turkic designation of the nobility, and its coincidence with the ancient Russian name of slaves is nothing more than a curiosity of the interaction of languages. This and many other things are described in this interesting book. Anton Gorsky - Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Russian History until the 19th Century, Faculty of History, Moscow State University.