Harvey Keitel plays Nikolai Bukharin, one of the leaders of the October Revolution that toppled the Czarist government in 1917. A member of the Politburo and editor of Pravda, he was removed by Stalin because of his opposition to Stalin's collectivization policy. Arrested in the Great Purge of 1937, he was executed the following year. Fifty years after his death, he was officially reinstated to the Communist Party under the more liberal policies implemented by Gorbachev. Bukharin's wife Anna (Flaminia Lizzani) was also arrested and spent decades in exile, always trying to clear her late husband's name. The film culminates when Bukharin dictates a letter for future generations to Anna about the future of the Communist Party.