A summary of "The Humanist" by Alexander Shevtsov

"The Humanist" is an original screenplay about a public "human rights activist" who, confronted with the reality of 1937, gradually transforms his personal salvation into complicity with the repressive system. The screenplay is known online as a competition entry; discussions on Screenwriter.ru have been recorded as early as 2008.

The story begins in modern-day Moscow: a polished young official and human rights commissioner, Alexei Sergeyevich Zubov, receives a state award in the Kremlin and gives an interview in which he opposes the death penalty, talks about "freedom of choice," and struts confidently in front of the cameras. His day is scheduled by his assistant down to the minute — from public events to training sessions, and "rehabilitation documents" for those executed are submitted as part of his work schedule. Along the way, Zubov learns of the case of a professor executed in 1937 for experiments in time travel, and decides to visit his granddaughter.

In the apartment, the granddaughter keeps things "just like they were back then," shows family photographs, and explains that the professor’s brother, upon learning of Nikolai Lvovich’s arrest, hanged himself from the chandelier. She leads the guests to a strange device resembling a sewing machine: it was buried at the dacha after the arrest and returned only after the war. Left alone, Zubov cuts his finger on the needle, instinctively spins the flywheel, and hears the click of a stop. At that moment, a hanged man dressed in 1930s clothing appears in the room, and the apartment itself looks as if it has just been searched. Zubov runs out into the stairwell in a panic and encounters a janitor, who mistakes him for a counter-terrorist and beats him.

Emerging into the courtyard, Zubov sees Young Pioneers and a lorry, and realizes he’s in Moscow in 1937. He hides, picks up a copy of Pravda from June 1, 1937, and realizes the "damn device" really did work. On the street, his expensive clothes and watch stand out; a policeman and tram passengers eye him warily, a child asks him point-blank if he’s a spy, and the conductor demands payment. Escaping attention, Zubov jumps out of the car and tries to exchange his watch for money, but is captured by street thugs, who brutally beat him and throw him into a sewer manhole, taking his clothes.

At dusk, a girl named Raya discovers the well — a simple, kind girl with pigtails. She first feeds a kitten, then hears a groan and helps Zubov out. Raya brings him home, despite the sharp disapproval of Aunt Vera, who fears trouble for a "gutter dweller" without papers and understands that the arrival of a stranger could ruin their life. A series of everyday scenes depicts Zubov’s recovery: Raya cares for him, he gradually comes to his senses, a closeness develops between them, and then a romance. Now dressed in simple period clothing, Zubov goes out into the courtyard with Raya, hears her confession about his "gentle hands," and begins to live in 1937 not as a random passerby, but as a person who needs to fit in to survive and find the device.

Subsequent events connect Zubov with the NKVD: he receives the name Morozov and finds himself caught up in the agency’s logic, where career advancement, "plans," and political loyalty are more important than human destinies. A circle of systemic figures forms around him: Ruchyov as a boss and pragmatist, Malinin as a party curator with a cordial manner and cold calculation, and more prominent figures, including Budyonny, in whose entourage Zubov perceives brute force and impunity, disguised as "state necessity." These official episodes evolve into a chain of compromises: Zubov, a man from the future with a humanistic rhetoric, increasingly acts as a functionary learning to command, surprise, and fear as tools of control.

Raya’s personal storyline is complicated by the fact that her fate becomes dependent on the apparatus’s games: in the final scenes, it is revealed that one of the system’s men, Zaitsev, confesses to Zubov that Raya wasn’t executed, despite being ordered to say so, and that the girl was kept "just in case," assigned to Butyrka prison for maintenance. Zubov reacts like a man of power: he deals with those who interfere, issues execution orders, and even schedules future arrests in advance, turning the "restoration of order" into a self-perpetuating machine. At the same time, he maintains the original goal in mind — to reach the professor’s device and return home — but the path to this goal is traversed by decisions in which the lives of others are constantly at stake.

At the climax, Zubov visits Raya in Butyrka and tries to regain her trust, explaining that he "knew nothing" and promising to take her to a place where "everything is different" and where they can treat what is irreparable in their time. Raya responds harshly: she reminds him of the other victims (particularly the Perelmans) and declares that "there will be no child," ruining his attempt to shift the conversation to promises of a family future. Then Zubov delivers his main explanation: he says he is from the 21st century, that he was brought here by the professor’s time machine, and that he went to the NKVD to find the device.

That night, Zubov brings Raya to the professor’s apartment, where the device is once again accessible. Before launching, he speaks to Ruchyov, now as someone selling knowledge about the future. Zubov effectively instructs Ruchyov on how to maintain power: he suggests "proving loyalty" to the leader, then launching a preemptive strike, arresting Stalin in 1941, eliminating Beria and Khrushchev, and preemptively portraying Zubov as a hero. Afterward, he spins the flywheel and, together with Raya, goes out onto the stairs, where, from the Pravda newspaper of June 1, 2007, he realizes the transfer has been successful.

However, the "return" turns out to be a trip to an alternate reality: a sign on a building announces the street’s name as "NKVD People’s Commissar Morozov Avenue," surrounded by the gray tones of ruin, patrols, and a curfew. In the square stands a stele with an inscription glorifying "NKVD People’s Commissar of the USSR Alexei Nikolaevich Morozov" as a hero, supposedly a victim of the "Khrushchev-Beria conspiracy," signed by the Chairman of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Ruchyev. Trying to escape the patrol, Zubov is wounded in the leg, and Raya dies from a gunshot, shielding him with her body. Horrified, he rushes back to the professor’s house, shouting that he will "fix everything," realizing that his deals and "corrections" to history have led to an even more grim outcome.

The finale returns to the professor’s apartment: Zubov, bleeding profusely, crawls toward the device, leaving a trail of blood, and attempts to spin the flywheel again, while footsteps are heard on the stairs. An officer enters the room and points a pistol at him, and Zubov repeats that he will fix what happened, but the flywheel clicks to a stop — leaving him between the empty room and a possible gunshot, unsure of what he’ll see when he turns around.