Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin entered the history of Russian literature as an unsurpassed satirist, master of allegory and observant narrator. In the story The History of a City, the author boldly and mercilessly ridicules those unsightly aspects of Russian life that have disastrous consequences. Although the work is written in the form of historical satire, the author''s eyes, first of all, are turned to the present, and many of the phenomena described in it exist to this day.