Marzio G. Mian undertook a demanding journey of six thousand kilometers along the Volga, bypassing the strict controls of the Russian secret services.

He chose the river-symbol of Russia as the central axis of his narrative because critical turning points in Russian history took shape on its banks: the establishment of Orthodoxy after the fall of Constantinople, the rise of the Tsarist empire, the Soviet victory at Stalingrad and Stalin's industrialization, as well as the consolidation of Vladimir Putin's post-Soviet autocracy.

The Volga has been the cradle of peoples and forms such as the Tatars, the Cossacks, the monks and shamans, as well as figures like Razin, Pugachev, Lenin, Pushkin, Gorky, and Khlebnikov. Here coexist the archaic rural Russia, the industrial and metropolitan, the steppes, the sovkhozes, the factories, and the wooden huts. It is the place where Europe and Asia meet or drift apart.

Traveling, therefore, along the river from the Valdai Hills to Astrakhan and passing through cities such as Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, and Volgograd, Mian brings to light a multinational people who still nurture the fragile dream of an imperial identity.