This article has several contexts. The first and most obvious one is the publication of an article by a shot and posthumously rehabilitated scholar based on a manuscript that survived in a private archive and was then published by S.G. Klyashtorny. The second context is the study of the living epic of the Turkic peoples, intensely developed in the twentieth century and became an important stage in understanding the dynamics of the epic tradition and in the development of folkloristic theory. Finally, the third and immediate context is the perspective consequence in the article of the author, recalling the year 1911, and the topic he proposed for a student competition for a medal (this topic involved collecting and commenting on all epic versions of Yediger and Tokhtamysh and creating a consolidated Russian version) – and subsequent discoveries in the area of this particular epic cycle, which are described in the article. The article in centered on the version recorded in 1919 by Nigmatulla Khakimov, a Tatar scientist, writer and educator who, like S., was killed during the years of the Soviet state terror. The article contains observations on the details and variants of the story and offers their interpretation.