‘The hammer and sickle were for years the symbols of my country. People recognised these frightening and sinister symbols of proletarian labour as the umpteenth variation on a theme: the relation between man and woman. The hammer is the vagina, the sickle is the penis. I wanted to show how normal human emotions are born and live and die in abnormal conditions under the Stalinist regime. That is why it starts as a political adventure and ends as a tragic love story.’ According to Sergej Livnev. The film tells the bizarre story of sex-change operations in the thirties under the Stalinist motto: ‘If the fatherland needs soldiers, we make soldiers. If it needs mothers, we make mothers.’ Although the ‘culprits’ were later prosecuted, the victims were forgotten. Yevdokia Kuznetsova was one of them; she became Yevdokim Kuznetsov, started a new life, married, adopted a child and even became a member of the Supreme Soviet.
