If you grew up in Russia at the end of the 20th century, you were familiar with street fights. This book is about those who made violence their credo: they beat people up and got beaten up—professionally, daily, mercilessly. These are the boys, members of the countless youth gangs that flooded the late Soviet Union. The first city where the phenomenon became truly widespread was Kazan.

Robert Garayev, the author of this book, fell into the 'Nizy,' one of the local gangs, while still in high school. Thirty years later, he decided to find out the origins of the Kazan phenomenon—one hundred and fifty teenage gangs that first 'divide the asphalt' in fights between neighborhoods, and then began to exterminate their own kind en masse—and how the boys themselves, former police officers, lawyers, and ordinary residents of a city disfigured by fear and cruelty recall those harsh days. This is the only book composed entirely of the voices of survivors—and those willing to tell the truth.