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No relation to the French Erreur de Jeunesse, the Russian Errors of Youth was 10 years in the making. Filmmaker Boris Frumin began the project in 1979, but the Soviet government found the film too close to reality for public consumption. A relaxing of censorship towards the end of the 1980s enabled Frumin to complete his film and enter it in several international festivals. It is easy to see why the old Soviet regime was dead-set against Errors of Youth back in 1979: the hero (Stanislav Zhadanko) embarks upon a film-length verbal rampage against virtually every element of life under communist rule. The man can't get any satisfaction in his relationships with the opposite sex, either, and it is this aspect of Errors of Youth that gives the film an aura of universality.