Loop and stone in green grass. Gospel of the Executioner

In the 70s of the twentieth century, the classics of Russian literature, the Weiner brothers, authors of the famous novel “The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed,” took a dangerous path: wanting to serve the truth in a country with a totalitarian regime, they created the anti-Soviet duology “The Noose and the Stone in the Green Grass” and "The Gospel According to the Executioner." The books touched on two extremely taboo topics: the atrocities of the “authorities” left without retribution and the “Jewish question.”
The heroes of the novel “The Noose and the Stone in the Green Grass” are Shulamith and Alyosha, her lover, the son of one of the leaders of the MGB. The destinies of their families are intertwined in the most amazing way. The novel contains both a tragic love story and a fascinating investigation with chases and discoveries. Reality, even in a relatively “vegetarian” time, destroys any living life, everyone who in one way or another does not fit into the wretched Soviet standards and wants the impermissible - freedom...
At the center of the novel “The Gospel According to the Executioner” is Pavel Khvatkin, a charismatic anti-hero who deftly weaves murderous plots, but is himself captive of a passionate craving for a woman whose life and family he mercilessly destroyed... In the 1970s, retired, but still MGB Colonel Khvatkin, not at all old, is still on horseback. “I want to win in life,” he says. Memory at times throws him from the prosperous present into the bloody past. We see his life from the inside, through his own eyes. And here is the “good news” from the executioner: the element of people who do not hesitate to break other people’s destinies is fear. They give birth to it, feed on it and understand only this language. Words of mercy and love are unknown to them, inaccessible. Their lives are also crippled. But that doesn't make them any less dangerous...