The hero of the documentary story “Gogol-Mogol” is the forgotten artist Alfred Eberling (1872-1951), who before the revolution served as a court painter, and then became a “court artist” under Lenin and Stalin. For many years he worked exclusively to order, and “for himself” he was engaged in photography, and his photographs depicted, among other things, the ballerina Tamara Karsavina, with whom the artist had an affair. The book about Eberling's life, written by Alexander Laskin, is a fusion of archival research, historical fiction and a "novel of secrets" - and its title reflects this complex genre recipe.