On July 16, 1918, Nicholas Romanov, the last Tsar of Russia, and his entire family were supposedly murdered by Russian Bolsheviks in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, Siberia. One year later, Alexander Kolchak, the Supreme Commander of the White Army, appointed a legal investigator to prove, beyond any doubt, that all members of the Romanov family had indeed been executed. The investigator's name was Nicholas Sokolov.

The Russian Galatea is a story based on Sokolov's investigation. It takes place in Siberia, 1919 – with the Russian Revolution as its background. The major thesis is fiction but woven around true historical facts. It is a detective story about one courageous investigator's obsession with finding out what really happened to Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family. It is also a story about Sokolov's deep relationship with the girl in a faded photograph. Is she alive or dead?