About the book: 2018 / 1753. Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, following in the footsteps of her glorious parent Peter the Great, who advocated the spread of Russian commerce in Asian possessions, orders a merchant caravan with goods to be sent to Khiva. And so the Samara and Kazan merchants, led by the caravan foreman Danil Rukavkin, set off on the road. Their path is long and dangerous, past the Cossack villages on Yaik, through the Kyrgyz-Kaisak lands. At every step, the pioneers faced the danger of not only being robbed, but also killed or captured and sold into slavery. And so, having crossed the steppes and sands, the merchants find themselves in Khiva. It would seem that the danger is over, but no, everything is just beginning - a long, as if in captivity, life in the eastern capital. This publication is the second part of a trilogy about the events before and during the Peasant War under the leadership of Emelyan Pugachev.