Natalya Asmolova

Stalin's Bride

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.

Black Corridor

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.