Srubov is a part of CHEKA, the secret police Lenin established after the Bolshevik Revolution. They arrest, interview for a minute, try in ten seconds, and execute intellectuals, aristocrats, Jews, clergy, and their families. In the building basement, five people at a time are shot as they stand naked facing wooden doors. No one to remember their last words; no martyrs, just anonymous bodies. Daily, the kangaroo court, the executions, the loading of bodies onto wagons. Srubov is cold, distant, sexually dysfunctional, and a deep thinker, hated by former friends and his family. As he tries to reason the nature of revolution and the purpose of CHEKA, he slowly goes mad.
What do the head of a secret file cabinet, students who don’t shy away from a glass, a police lieutenant colonel, and a prisoner’s wife have in common? All these people turn out to be the heroes of one story, which began with two friends who decided to earn extra money. In pursuit of a long ruble, they come to the Volkovo cemetery in St. Petersburg. As it turned out, this detective story began in the distant past, when we were all part of the same System, sacredly looking after its own interests and not leaving alone any of those who once touched the terrible secret. The lazy students don’t even suspect that they are already on the verge of death...
An angelic-looking but selfish and ruthless young man wanders from crime to crime without the slightest remorse. In the Russian film "Satan," the devil is a delicately handsome young man whose murderous opportunism is too easy to understand. While the film registers shock at its protagonist's absolute amorality, it also presents him as part of a bitterly divided and pessimistic culture. The world of "Satan" is one in which nothing really works, and therefore anything goes.