Leningrad, December 1980. On the eve of Chekist Day, drugs are planted on a famous scientist, head of the Department of Foreign Languages, and his wife. The efforts of colleagues and friends - from academicians Mikhail Alekseev and Dmitry Likhachev in Leningrad to Joseph Brodsky and Sergei Dovlatov in the USA - are unable to influence the tragic course of events; everything is decided in advance. The peaceful life and fruitful work of a German philologist is cut short, giving way to a man-made hell: a fictitious investigation, a cell in Kresty, falsification of criminal case materials, a guilty verdict, 10 thousand kilometers of a convoy to Kolyma, life in a Susuman colony, a suicide attempt, a prison hospital, liberation, many years of persistent struggle for rehabilitation... A new book by Moscow historian Pyotr Druzhinin, who continues his large-scale research on the relationship between Soviet ideology and humanities, is based on a variety of archival documents, materials from the KGB of the USSR, and testimonies of contemporaries. The author managed to recreate a merciless and at the same time fascinating picture of public life at the end of the Soviet era and show - through the dramatic fate of the main character - the work of the Soviet law enforcement system, based on lawlessness and arbitrariness.