Introduction by Vyacheslav Glazychev
Moscow, Europe Publishing House, 2006, pp 448
For all its scientific fundamentality, this book by Vasily Ulianovsky is an extremely engaging experience for a reader taking a rapt interest in all those 'Russian old times' that regularly flash back at us in modernity. Having lived through troubled times of their own, present-day readers take a particularly keen interest in the transition period when Russia was shaking and rocking in its quest for freedom and search for order. The phenomenon of imposture and its amazing success, the speed and readiness shown by some of the boyars, clergy, nobility and peasants in swearing allegiance to Godunov, the Impostor, Shuisky, yet another Impostor, the Polish Prince Wladislaus - all of this does not appear that great a puzzle for a reader who has lived through the perestroika and the referendum on preservation of the USSR, the Belovezhskaya Pushcha Accords and the GKChP putsch, the confrontation between the Russian parliament and the first Russian president, etc. It is a lesser puzzle indeed, yet a puzzle it still is. The book brings back to us the voices of those who witnessed and took part in the events that constitute what we now call the "Time of troubles", presenting the reader with the rationale behind them, as well as the myths piled up much later.
