The central theme of the film: "Tales from Kolyma" by Vralam Shalamov
The author of "Tales from Kolyma" and many other works spent 17 years in the dreaded GULAG camps in Kolyma. This exile to which Varlam Tikhonovitch was condemned in 1929 had been imposed on him because of the distribution of Lenin's letter addressed to the Congress in which he criticized Stalin. Now this letter is called "Lenin's Testament"...