The history of unofficial Russian art of the last quarter of the 20th century, told by an eyewitness to the events. Arriving on a journalistic assignment to the first Sotheby's auction in the USSR in 1988, Andrew Solomon, not knowing either the Russian language or the peculiarities of late Soviet life, finds himself first in a squat in Furmanny Lane, and then in the thick of the artistic life of two capitals: illegal vernissages in workshops and in vacant lots, prohibited concerts of the groups “Central Russian Upland” and “Kino”, “trips out of town” by Andrei Monastyrsky and the first exhibitions of domestic art underground stars in the West, the circle of Ilya Kabakov and “New Artists”. As a conscientious researcher, Solomon tries to describe and explain Soviet unofficial art, encrypted for the external view, while simultaneously telling the fascinating story of the cultural explosion of the perestroika era and describing the people who found themselves at its epicenter.