By chance and by means of unexpectedly simple but failsafe technology, the American protagonist of the novel becomes a limitless ruler of Russia. It is a dystopian novel, quite unlike other works of this author, and is fundamentally different from dystopias of Zamyatin, Orwell and Huxley. It does not incorporate far-fetched fantasy, it especially terrifies the reader with its domestic accuracy. The semantic core of the novel consists of eternally relevant problems of identity and power; the prototypes are not specific characters of the political elite, but are rather archetypes of those in power, who have varying names and guises in every epoch, but whose mentality (at least in Russia) remains unchanged.