Two Prosecutors.

I recently saw the Sergei Loznitsa movie Two Prosecutors and was impressed enough that I decided to read the novella by Georgy Demidov that it was based on. I’m glad I did so, and I’m glad I saw the movie first, because the movie is better and the comparison is instructive. The plot is simply told: in the dread year 1937, an idealistic young regional prosecutor named Kornev receives a short message, written in blood, from a political prisoner held in the local prison requesting a visit. He manages not only to gain entry into the prison but to talk the astonished head warden (how did this kid even find out about it?) into letting him see the prisoner, who turns out to be an old professor of his named Stepnyak, who (after ascertaining that Kornev’s parents are dead and he is unmarried) shows him terrible wounds resulting from brutal interrogations demanding confession to crimes he hasn’t committed, tells him there is clearly a regional band of counterrevolutionaries who have taken over…