The action takes place on the eve of perestroika in a dusty and dirty provincial garrison forgotten by God, lost in the sands of Turkestan during the war in Afghanistan. The town is located on the outskirts of the Soviet Empire: hopeless melancholy, many everyday problems, complex interethnic relations, a dead end for junior officers, a complete lack of further prospects... The story may seem like fiction, mockery, or even mockery of the army. This, they say, could not happen during the time of building socialism, and the moral character of the Soviet people has always been exemplary. Alas, believe it or not, everything set out on these pages is the purest truth.