AllMovie

Kislorodnyy Golod is reportedly based on the director's personal experiences while serving out his military obligation in the Red Army. The required term of military service in the USSR was two years for the army, and three years for the Navy. The film is about so-called "dedovshchina," a Russian colloquialism used to describe the practice in the Soviet Army where young servicemen are constantly humiliated and abused by those who have served their second year already, while supervising officers keep their eyes wide shut. There were a number of deaths related to dedovshchina, but the military always tried to present them as something extraordinary and lacking any social background. The present film would seem to be some of sort of exposé. In the story, a Ukrainian boy doing his required term of military service is subjected to special abuse simply because he is not Russian, until he responds by fighting fire with fire.