Child 44

Moscow, 1953. Leo Demidov is a decorated war veteran and officer of the MGB, convinced that the security service protects a society in which crime is officially treated as a product of the capitalist past. When the death of a colleague’s young son is declared an accident, evidence of murder is suppressed. Leo is soon ordered to investigate his own wife, Raisa, and his failure to provide the expected accusation costs him his position and sends the couple into provincial exile.

In the industrial city of Volsk, Leo discovers that other children have died in strikingly similar circumstances. Pursuing the pattern means working without institutional support while the state treats acknowledgement of a serial killer as a political threat. The investigation becomes inseparable from Leo and Raisa’s damaged marriage, the terror created by denunciation and the compromises that once secured Leo’s career. A famine-set opening and the atmosphere of Stalin’s final months place the murder case inside a broader history of official concealment and survival.