Natalya Asmolova

At a dusty crossroads in the Soviet Union villagers surrender their possessions - a horse, a samovar, a goat - to the state. The train which takes them away brings to the village a physically and mentally handicapped woman, barely able to speak. She makes herself bracelets of burrs and studies herself in a cracked and cloudy mirror. Befriended by very few, teased and tormented by many she seeks protection at a huge portrait of Stalin.

History teacher Nikolay Echevin on his sixtieth birthday receives an anonymous letter in which he is called the "center of public infection" and threatened with murder.