"Let's say a meritorious artist one night asks his wife to get out of the car to push some glass off the road and then runs her down. A girl, a Young Communist, soon to be married, tucks her old grandparents into bed, seals the windows and turns on the gas before going out for the evening. A hard-working peasant, an honored agronomist, kills a flirt from Moscow. These are worse than crimes; these are things-that-aren't-supposed-to-happen. They're the truth. They're the truth about a new kind of Russian: a man who can afford a mistress and a car; a young girl who has to bring her husband home to live in one room with two old people; a peasant and nothing but a peasant who knows he'll never leave a village a thousand miles from the rest of the world. We don't put this in our reports, but we're supposed to know it. That's why we have to have special permission to deal with the truth."
— Arkady Renko, Gorky Park
