Every day, a Cheka troika tribunal made of director Srubov and his assistants Pepel and Katz reads out a long list of all kinds of real and perceived counter-revolutionaries and class enemies.

The terrible conveyor of death operates in the basement, overseen by Srubov: the prisoners are systematically taken out of their cell, ordered to undress, placed against the wall in fives, and shot, usually in the back of the head.

Eventually, however, pangs of conscience become so unbearable to Srubov that, after his own father is shot by his Cheka comrade and personal friend Katz, he experiences a nervous breakdown and is committed to a mental asylum.

The Chekist was adapted by Jacques Baynac from Vladimir Zazubrin's short story "Щепка" (known variably in English as "Sliver", "The Splinter", or "The Chip"), which was written in 1923 but has remained unpublished until the Glasnost era in 1989 when it was printed in the journal Sibirskie Ogni.

Zazubrin, a former Bolshevik infiltrator of the Okhrana and veteran of both sides of the Civil War, himself fell victim to the Great Purge and was himself arrested and executed in 1937, along with Valerian Pravdukhin[2] who wrote the preface for the original intended publication.