Sergei Isavnin

Srubov is a part of CHEKA, the secret police Lenin established after the Bolshevik Revolution. They arrest, interview for a minute, try in ten seconds, and execute intellectuals, aristocrats, Jews, clergy, and their families. In the building basement, five people at a time are shot as they stand naked facing wooden doors. No one to remember their last words; no martyrs, just anonymous bodies. Daily, the kangaroo court, the executions, the loading of bodies onto wagons. Srubov is cold, distant, sexually dysfunctional, and a deep thinker, hated by former friends and his family. As he tries to reason the nature of revolution and the purpose of CHEKA, he slowly goes mad.

In one big country there was a small village of Khlyupovo. And there lived in that village old men and old women, and small children. But one day, tired of the constant auditors and visiting bosses, the village decided to separate from the country...

During the main withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, a company of hardened paratroopers under the command of Major Bandura are joined by Steklov, the son of a high-ranking officer.

Two young soldiers are caught in a sandstorm during a training battle. In these extreme conditions, the real characters are revealed...

Young lieutenant arrives to tank regiment stationed in the Central Asia. He uses unusual for Soviet Army methods to train his soldiers. It predictably leads to tensions with superiors and subordinates. However later it pays back during live exercises.

Jack Vosmyorkin, young American with Russian origins decides to return to Russia in order to watch October Revolution in action.

Tragic circumstances brought the Spirit, a former "Afghan", to a prison cell, where he found himself alone with the German baron Maximilian von Stoltz. The spirit once lived by the sea, in a house where there were a woman and a child. Served as a paratrooper in Afghanistan. Unknown paths led him into the criminal world, he has 11 murders to his name, the prospect of capital punishment.

Yakov, a former street child who accidentally ended up in America as a child, returns to his native village in the USSR. He hopes to be given land and become a real farmer. Having received some cigar tobacco seeds from an American friend, Vosmyorkin began to put his plans into practice...