About the book: the year / XIII-XIV centuries - a turning point in Russian history. At this time, after the Mongol-Tatar invasion of the mid-13th century and the establishment of the so-called. under the yoke of the Golden Horde, the development paths of the Russian lands diverge. In North-Eastern Rus', in the 14th century, a centripetal process began, which ended at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century with the formation of a state that received the name Russia. From the second half of the 13th century to the beginning of the 15th century, the southern and western Russian lands were included in state formations of foreign ethnic origin - the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. The single ethnic community “Rus” ceases to exist: in the northern and eastern Russian lands the process of formation of the Great Russian nationalities begins, in the southern and western ones - the Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalities.