The Prohibition years. Chicago bootleggers suffer losses due to their betrayal by one Mick Nich - Mikita Nichiporuk. The mob decides to execute the traitor, who escaped to Odesa, USSR, and organized his own bootleg business there. The hitman, Pollack, arrives in Odesa, and realizes how hard it is to make the hit here, as compared to a civilized country like USA.
1911. Lenin organizes the first Bolshevik party school near Paris, in the small town of Longjumeau. Through a chain of historical parallels and associations, this time is intertwined with the events of the Paris Commune, the October Revolution and the political struggles of the post-revolutionary years.
The main character Vorobei is a professional grave digger and alcohol addict, who runs away from hospital to dig graves instead of treating his head broken by his brother. He comes to cemetery and keeps on working, instead of his friends' advice to stay in the hospital. The world of death turns out to be surrounded by corruption, satanic money-making, cemetery mafia and lots of vodka.
