Content Warning: The source text and this guide refer to violent repression and antisemitism.

Sasha Zaichik, the novel’s protagonist, is a 10-year-old boy growing up in Moscow in the Soviet Union. His greatest desire is to be like his Communist father and serve Comrade Stalin and the USSR with character and dignity. His story takes place during the 1936-38 Great Terror, a purge of all anti-communist forces in Soviet society that claimed the lives of over 700,000 Russians. The novel portrays Sasha’s transition from a devout Soviet youth to a boy who recognizes the horrors and crimes committed by Stalin’s regime, and the human cost.

The author created Sasha’s character based on himself as a child in Moscow in the 1960s, after Stalin’s death. “Much of the novel is autobiographical,” Yelchin says (166). “Sasha and I are similar in the way we react to the world around us. We want to believe that the real world is a better place than it so often is. We are always surprised when we come face to face with brutality, unfairness, or lies” (166).

Sasha is a small brunette boy, thin from malnourishment and clad in oversized clothing.