In the fall of 1984, Gregor, a 40-year-old economist, is brought to the maximum security ward of the Moscow Central Institute for Forensic Psychiatry from the KGB prison. Four months earlier, while searching the house of a friend of Gregor's, the KGB agents discovered a book, written by Gregor, that was critical of the Soviet economic system. In this book Gregor defined himself as a "Marxist economist" and a patriot of his country. He used language indistinguishable from that of the "official" and "approved" concepts current in Soviet economic and political thought. However, the book was an impassioned argument for reform of the state economy in order to bring about greater prosperity and economic stability in the country.