“Panurgov Herd” is the first book of Vsevolod Krestovsky’s historical duology “The Bloody Puf.” A poet, writer, and publicist—and the author of the famous novel “Petersburg Slums”—Krestovsky vividly and from an unexpected angle shows the events of “the New Time of Troubles,” the years 1861–1863. In “Panurgov Herd,” there are both love intrigues and nihilism that undermines society’s moral foundations, and a cunning Polish conspiracy—links in a single chain threatening to bind the Russian state in a difficult moment of its history.