When a Soviet state official attempts to coerce a celebrated poet into apologizing for a political joke he made, the official gets a taste of his own predatory medicine at the hand of the poet's vengeful wife.

In 1990s Leningrad, a Russian man prepares to emigrate, but things don't quite go as planned—twists of fate, complex friendships, and the omnipresent KGB stand in his way.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, a Russian man studying in the United States reconnects with his estranged, ludicrously Communist grandfather. Through letters, phone calls, and eBay, they bond over their shared experiences with death and Soviet life.

From factory workers to the king, members of all social classes in an industrialized society are distraught with their way of life and desire socioeconomic change. In scheming to join the revolution they deem inevitable, everyone struggles to be the first to initiate the highly desired change.

An American college student who studies Russian history heads to St. Petersburg at the the end of the Cold War and becomes attracted to her roommate's boyfriend, a former soldier. His stories, along with her interactions with other college students, add to her experience of a tentative social environment in post-war Russia.

As conflict rages between Russia and Ukraine, a woman struggles to get through to her friend caught in the middle of it.

In an fantastical Russia, a flower shop owner thinks he recognizes a strange woman on the street—and almost loses everything trying to remember who she is.

A young British soldier returns to his home in Westminster after the war, only to find that both he and the city have been impacted by the cruelness of the war.

A young would-be poet develops a complicated relationship with the most famous living Bosnian poet at the time. This relationship ends decades later on another continent when that poet dies, and the young man finds a life of his own that doesn't involve poetry.

A current university professor and former soldier sits serenely in his office until two students, who are actually his former army colleagues, enter for essay help. The three boys discuss a possible essay topic about a real attack that involved of the army lieutenants of their time.