Spuriouser and spuriouser. Grushenka is reportedly the true-life account of a peasant girl in Czarist Russia, who through her own peculiar talents, and a taste for the whip, makes her way through the erotic ranks, rising to one day own a high-class brothel. Supposedly, the Russian authorities frowned upon the work, but allowed it to samizdat about as an object lesson in the evils of communism.