I haven't watched the movie, but I know this story very well, as I lived close to that place. Chikatilo was molesting children when he worked as a teacher, and raped teen sportswomen in school before he started his rape-killing streak. There can be hundreds of young victims who survived, and hundred who were murdered by him, out of 120 cases he was accused only 43 were proven to be his victims. You reminded me dark times, I or father were following my mother in the evenings, just in case, after Chikatilo was caught, as people realized such thing is possible, so everyone started to afraid such people.

Chikatilo case is also very good example how USSR were hiding criminals, as during that time and previously it was said that only capitalism can made maniacs, and in communistic society it is just impossible, so police was often closing eyes on maniacs, or caughting them and being very silent that they exist. Chikatilo was just way too big of a case to stay unknown.

I was victim of such gay sweepings, but it was after Chikatilo, right before USSR collapse, but they found nothing, just denunciation of neighbourghs that I am living with a man, so maybe we are doing something wrong, so I only spend half a year on unpaid work. If I would caught second time or they "found" evidence I had homosexual sex - then I could end up in prison or mental asylum with future "sex-reassignment" surgery.

And with blaming on homosexuals there were even more, - even two slurs that homosexual men are called are both coming from "pederast", one is "peedor" and other is more soft "pedik", both meaning exclusively homosexual men (nowadays also can mean just bad person), it is mostly because homosexual men were all blamed in molesting kids, so gay and pederast were almost synonyms. Homosexual women were believed to not exist at all, so unlike men, who could get into prison or get executed - lesbnians were almost always sent into mental asylums with heavy medicamental treatment (I've heard a lot of stories about them getting pregnant there or ending lives with suicide, but I don't know anyone in person to know if that was true or not). Nowaydas those slurs do not have "pederast" sub-meaning to them, and just anti-gay slurs.