A collection of comic stories drawn from Hašek's time in Russia after the First World War, when he worked with the Bolsheviks and served as a political official in the Red Army. The tales mix reportage with exaggeration, showing a wandering Czech humorist observing revolution, bureaucracy and the strange characters of a country in upheaval. They are told with the same irreverent tone as his Švejk writing, and offer a lively, unofficial view of the Russian Civil War years.