“The Death of Democracy” is the second joint work of Vladimir Ruga and Andrei Kokorev. As in the previous novel by these authors - “The Kaiser's Gold” (published by the Olma-Press publishing house in 2002), the action takes place in a fictional Russia, where there was no victory of the October Revolution. The same main character - a young counterintelligence officer, Lieutenant Pyotr Shuvalov - continues to honestly serve the Fatherland. After being wounded in pursuit of the notorious “German money,” Peter goes to Crimea for treatment. In Sevastopol, Shuvalov witnesses an explosion, as a result of which the battleship "Democracy" sinks right in the Northern Bay. It is characteristic that in the fall of 1916, under the same circumstances, the battleship Empress Maria was lost in the Sevastopol Bay. Involuntarily, the lieutenant finds himself at the center of events related to the investigation into the causes of the explosion. Shuvalov's position becomes mortally dangerous when an agent of the Committee of Public Security, Yakov Blyumkin, begins to act against him. Ultimately, it turns out that behind the explosion of the battleship there is a political struggle between two groups of capitalists - “St. Petersburg” and “Muscovites”. To collect evidence, Shuvalov moves to Moscow, where he acts on the personal instructions of Minister of War A.I. Guchkova. The lieutenant not only emerges victorious from the battle with the anarchists of “sailor Zheleznyak” and exposes the “scorpions” of the corrupt press. The main thing is that he manages to obtain documents that help expose the participants in the conspiracy.
Like the first novel by V. Ruga and A. Kokorev, “The Death of Democracy” combines global historical fiction with a description of the historical and everyday details of life in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. Both authors graduated from the Faculty of History of Moscow State Pedagogical University. V.I. Lenin. Vladimir Ruga is currently a top manager at Sibneft, Andrey Kokorev works on television and studies the history of Moscow.
