Pasha Ivanov is a child of the Freeze, born in Moscow during Brezhnev's repressive rule. Night after night his parents and their friends gather to preserve the memory of terrifying Stalinist violence, and to expose the continued harassment of dissidents. When Gorbachev promises glasnost, openness, twenty-four-year-old Pasha longs to create art and to carry on the work of those who came before him. His search to find meaning leads him to assemble a fractured story of Russia's traumatic past.