The history of one city Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin contemporaries called libel on the history of the Russian state. This book remains relevant in our time, being, in fact, not a merciless sentence of Russian reality, but a ruthless surgical operation that opens and heals the ulcers of society. It still remains a highly useful and clever satire on the "lead abominations" of what is happening around.