Vera Kolesnikova

1826, St. Petersburg. After the suppression of speeches on the Senate Square, the investigative commission begins searching for the Decembrists. Some of them are caught by the authorities because of informers. Suddenly, a series of brutal murders takes place in St. Petersburg: the victims are those who denounced the Decembrists. A piece of paper with lines from a poem by the young poet Alexander Pushkin invariably remains near the bodies of the dead. A Moscow detective and a nobleman released from arrest, Alexander Boshnyak, are taking over the investigation of the case.

Set in 1965 in the midst of the Cold War, Totems follows a French scientist, Francis Mareuil, as he begins working as a spy. While working for the French Secret Service and the CIA, Mareuil meets Lyudmila Goloubeva, a pianist forced to work for the KGB. A romance blossoms between them but neither can be sure what is an expression of their true feelings, and what is the fruit of political shenanigans…