Gessen's novel centers around the stories of three literary-minded friends: Keith, a Harvard-educated writer living in New York City; Sam, living in Boston and writing the "great Zionist epic"; and Mark, who is trying to complete a history dissertation on the Mensheviks at Syracuse University.
After the occupation of GDR by the Bolsheviks in 1921, many Georgian Mensheviks led by Zhordania fled to Leuville-sur-Orge, France where they set up, in a small castle, the Government of the Democratic Republic of Georgia in Exile.
This included many former Internationalists, German Independent Social-Democrats like Rudolf Hilferding, Austro-Marxists like Max and Friedrich Adler, Mensheviks like Dan, centre-left SRs like Chernov and the Left SRs.
When the Commune was toppled by the Centro Caspian Dictatorship, a British-backed coalition of Dashnaks, SRs and Mensheviks, Vazirov and his comrades were captured by British troops and executed by a firing squad between the stations of Pereval and Akhcha-Kuyma of Transcaucasian Railroad.