This is more like it! I love horror that's set in historical times, because there's so much awful in history that can be... not exploited, exactly, but used to illustrate just how far humans can let themselves fall. And often, as is the case with the prison guards here, through sheer indifference. Roman, the protagonist, has been sentenced to lengthy imprisonment (in what is presumably a Siberian camp) for slandering Stalin. That insult comprised telling a joke about Stalin at a party, but he was a monstrous bastard - I've written about the Soviet biochemist Lina Stern in the past, who also fell foul of him - with no sense of humour, and violently wrecking lives was a result. Roman is persuaded to try and escape with two other inmates, and they run off into the freezing wilderness... accompanied by a figure of Russian folklore that Roman has been bribing with stolen food. (Starvation is a consistent theme here.)

The idea of leaving a bit of bread out for something turns up in a lot of cultures. I've heard it for fairies and so on, but Roman's, uh, "friend," is not a fairy. Whatever it is, it's effectively only shown in partial light, and the art surrounding this monstrous creature is very, very effective.