This is the book of memoirs of Alexander Perepechenyh, the member of one of the underground religious sects which started to emerge en masse throughout the rural parts of Russia with the beginning of the Revolution. The author tells his personal life-story, which uncovers the real scale of the violent persecutions of the religious communities in the Soviet state during all the period of its existence.

The book is the suffering voice of the perishing traditional rural community, which refuses to be ‘reorganized’ into kolkhoz, and even more of that, refuses all the sovietness altogether, ticketing it as the Satan’s kingdom and trickery. Sometimes it sounds nostalgic, sometimes perplexed, but most of the time it is firm, rigorous and categorical, though fatalistic beyond fatalism, and yet at the same time reassuring. This book is made up of the reflections, reminiscences and experience of the unorthodox orthodox Christian who lived a life of nonviolent resistance against one of the most violently atheistic states in history.