Moscow, 1992, Sasha Greenberg, an astrophysicist, returns to the city of his birth after 17 years of exile. Formerly reviled as a traitor, he is now welcomed back as a hero. The period of "Perestroika" (restructuring) has turned everything upside down. No one, save a few opportunists, seems prepared for this new Russia. Capitalism has undermined the communist system. Vodka is rationed. Old people can barely feed themselves. Films of polluted seas, rivers on fire, and dying forests, are seeing the light of day for the first time. People are saying things in public that formerly would have sent them to prison. Many expect revolution. Some welcome it.