IN 1870, Michail Saltykow, under the pseudonym N. Schtschednn, wrote The Story of a City, a biting allegory on the history of Russia and its rulers Out of this historical source material, Serge; Owtscharow has fashioned an extremely topical satire on the writing of history today In the process, he has stuck well-known political figures such as Lenin, Stalin or Kruschev in the costumes of the Saltykow-Schtschedrin heroes and has used his film material in an unusual way as well Each segment is portrayed in its own representative filmic manner in the style of the weekly newsreels of the 1920's with their contructivist will to form, in the sense of the histrionic, self-important Stalinist productions of the 1930s, in the statuesque arrangements of the weekly newsreels of the 1950's - Programmme notes, Berlin Film Festival, 1990

"Monsters populate the book But that's contrary to real life Sometimes the most repulsive people are outwardly very sympathetic Which makes it even more difficult to see through them We tried to make our heroes as sympathetic as possible, to show them not only as executioners, but also as victims of themselves, of the administrative regulations, rules for living, and the relationship to the people that they themselves created " -Sergej Owtscharow - (PKa)