An essayist N. Melnikov upon return from a business trip to Temirtau[4] told the staff of Novy Mir a story of abandoned guard dogs who were starving because their training banned them from taking food from anywhere but their handlers.
What is more, whenever seeing a group of people walking in an apparent formation, they would "guard" it and if someone strayed from the column, the dogs would try to force them back in file.
Vadimov said that he quickly concocted a satirical story based on this plot and showed in to Alexander Tvardovsky (who headed Novy Mir).
Over time most of them somehow found their ways in "civil" life, but Ruslan cannot forget his duty; he perceives the empty camp as one huge prisoners' escape and prefers to starve than to take food from stranger's hands.
The latter thinks he tamed the formerly vicious dog, but Ruslan sees Potyorty as a runaway inmate who returned voluntarily (he saw this happen many times) and decides to guard him until the "normal order of things" is restored.
Ruslan is mortally wounded, but manages to crawl back to the railway station, where he remembers his littermates being killed shortly after their birth and wonders if they were luckier than he, before finally dying himself.
"[1] Andrey Sinyavsky wrote that Ruslan is the picture of an ideal communist hero: his honesty, loyalty, heroism, discipline make him a true bearer of the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism.
[1] Paul Zweig writes that Ruslan is in a twisted "pact" of love with the human race, for the gulag guards are like gods to him: they may punish, but they also caress and give food.
Zweig writes: "But here is the paradox that lifts Mr. Vladimov's tale beyond the realm of political argument: Ruslan's poisoned pact of love has made him curiously lovable — not a monster, but a deluded, yearning animal, for whom the orderliness of the camp has represented all the happiness he ever hopes to know.