Motifs from the life and work of Absurdist writer Daniil Kharms inspired Kovalov to create a paranoid and grotesque picture of the totalitarian past, inhabited by monsters of the NKVD (precursor to the KGB), intellectuals and corrupt officials. The action is set in the year when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed (in which Russia and Germany sliced up Central Europe) and leads from a communal house in Leningrad to a kind of emblem of Nazi Germany. The director himself is portrayed as a Leni Riefenstahl type, floating through space with a film camera to capture the speech of a Fuhrer figure. The film is full of newsreel footage from the time of Stalinism and the Third Reich, ingeniously cut. With a typical mixture of aversion and affection, Kovalοv manages to evoke the insanity of this period.