The Tsar of Love and Techno

Set in the Chechen city of Grozny, which has just been labeled the “most devastated city in the world,” this story finds Ruslan, an art enthusiast who works as a bureaucratic government official, at the helm of a new assignment. His boss charges him with attracting more tourists to Grozny, which the war virtually destroyed. Ruslan’s friend Nadya needs an expensive surgery to recover the eyesight she lost during a bombing, and Ruslan wishes to help her. Nadya works as an art restorer, and her thesis was based on the work of Roman Markin, the art censor from “The Leopard.”

Ruslan tries everything to make his city more appealing, mostly to no avail. He even opens a small art museum in his own apartment, featuring a landscape painting of a farm where Ruslan lived with his wife and child, both of whom died in an explosion. Traumatized by the loss of his family, Ruslan spends his time trying to help Nadya, to whom he is a hybrid of boyfriend and caretaker.

Ruslan’s boss informs him that the tourist bureau project has failed despite his best efforts, and he tells Ruslan that he must conduct one last tour for Galina and her husband, the oligarch.