The action of E. Budinas’s novel “The Intermediate Man” takes place in the big city and in the small village of Ut, where one successful young man builds himself a dacha-estate. He does this by masterfully using the features and weaknesses of our economic and bureaucratic system. He is driven not so much by material interest as by the passion of a unique artist who decided to prove to his skeptical friends that a strong system can provide a person with well-being if he lives by its laws. “If there is a fence,” says this character, “then in real socialism there must be a hole in the fence.” In the end, he was defeated because he did not take into account that this system could work just as reliably against him.