The fantastic motorcar rally undertaken by two young French couples on the forbidden roads of the Soviet Union Dominique Lapierre, aged 25 and Jean - Pierre Pedrazzini, 27, two star reporters of the prestigious French news magazine Paris Match, obtained from Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 the extraordinary authorization to cross the iron curtain aboard their own automobile and to travel 13,000 kilometers on the forbidden Soviet roads. Never before had any foreigner been able to live such an adventure. In the whole of Soviet Russia there was only one petrol pump selling high octane gasoline and no Soviet citizen had ever seen an automobile painted in two colours. From Poland to the mountains of Ural, from the villages of White Russia to the beaches of the Black Sea, from the Kremlin to Stalin's birth place in Georgia, Lapierre, Pedrazzini and their Parisian wives discover the secret faces of a people hidden behind the walls of the Cold War. As they get deeper into their adventure, they are struck by an alarming question: how has the Soviet regime managed to convince a nation deprived of freedom that it is the happiest one on earth? Beyond its unbelievable adventures, this trip is a dive into a world that explored the history of mankind.