Set in a remote Siberian depot immediately following the demolition of one of the gulag's notorious camps and the emancipation of its prisoners, Faithful Ruslan is an embittered cri de coeur from a writer whose circumstances obliged him to resist the violence of arbitrary power. A starving stray, Ruslan and his cadre of fellow guard dogs dutifully wait for the arrival of new prisoners - but the unexpected arrival of a work party provokes a climactic bloodletting. Fashioned from the perceptions of an animal, Vladimov's indictment of the gulag exposes all man's cruelty.
