Stalinland, as the title suggests, is a fictional representation of an especially oppressive period of history during which any pretext suffices to destroy the lives of untold millions. It is the story of Mikhail Pavlovich Nekrasov, a writer who is condemned to die in a Russian labor camp for the offense of publishing a book of blank pages. His nemesis, Stepan Ilyich, a member of Stalin's infamous secret police, plagiarizes the forgotten corpus of Mikhail's literary works, and for a time, his villainy is amply rewarded. But if worldly justice fails insofar as Stepan's crimes are concerned, unworldly justice finally closes in to correct the miscarriage.