Several years after the fall of the Soviet Union, a young Russian man graduates from high school and prepares to study at the University of Arkansas. Before he leaves, he receives a note from his grandfather, whom he calls Grandpa. The note is written on a Communist Party ballot signed by everyone who lives in the village of Leningrad. In the note, his grandfather calls him a rotten capitalist pig and wishes him a safe flight. Grandpa is a full-blooded communist. In World War II, he became inspired to join the Red Army and the Communist Party when they took over his Bulgarian village, after which he promptly fell in love with Lenin. He also, in what his grandson calls the classic Communist love story, fell in love with a woman who becomes his wife at an evening gathering of the party. When she dies in 1991, Grandpa refuses to leave his ancestral village and, convinced that the fall of Communism has killed his wife, effects "the great October village revolution," and renames the town Leningrad.  In the present, his grandson has a hard time understanding American college life, which leads to many ridiculous phone calls with his grandfather. During one of them, however, they remember something darker: the death of the student's parents. Seven years prior, his Grandpa had had a stroke, because of which his family frantically drove through the night to visit him in the village. The narrator is the only survivor of the car crash. He blames his grandfather, which eventually causes an estrangement which lasts a year. During the student's sophomore year, his grandfather has him buy "Lenin's body" on eBay and ship it to his village, where he will build a mausoleum to house it. He knows that it is a scam, but, he tells his grandson, he needs to pretend otherwise because of his health. After one final call, during which they laugh together for hours, Grandpa no longer answers the phone. Weeks later, the student receives a letter in the mail from his grandfather: he has died, and he wants his grandson to know that he loves him.