The action of the novel affects two periods - Russia covered by the Civil War of 1918-1919 and post-perestroika Russia of the mid-1990s. The central plan of the story is the perception of reality by the decadent poet Peter the Void, who is immediately in both time periods. In revolutionary Moscow, Emptiness meets Vasily Chapaev and leaves with him to the front of the Civil War. In modern Russia, Peter is a patient of a psychiatric hospital.