The film is based on the feuilleton of the same name by I. Ilf and E. Petrov. A writer named Moldovantsev delivers a thrilling Sovietâstyle Robinson Crusoe adventure on deadline, only to have his editor insist on adding a local party chairman, freed exâmembers, an activist collector, a housing committee and even a meeting table, bell and ledger washed ashore. Reluctantly he complies, so far that he jettisons Robinson himself as an unjustified weakling, transforming his novel into an absurd manifesto of bureaucratic excess.