Rubashov is arrested at night, taken to prison, interrogated, re-interrogated, and is induced to confess to fantastic crimes and conspiracies, then given a public trial and shot. Some five or six weeks elapse between his imprisonment and death, and the tension of those weeks is very powerfully communicated. To the drama of Rubashov's prison-conditioned mind is added a grim description of the G.P.U. method of political interrogation.