ASSA is set in Crimea during the winter in the mid eighties. A young musician (Bananan) falls for mobster's (Krymov) young mistress (Alika). The parallel story line involves an 18th century assassination plot.
Peasant Nikifor Bubnov goes to the mining regions of Donbas to earn money for a horse. People working nearby become his friends - with them he supports and develops the Stakhanov movement.
A negligent student of the Academy of Fine Arts is late for a drawing lesson and instead of an analytical drawing of a plaster Venus, he hastily "paints" a red square, after which he is subjected to a demonstrative flogging by the professor.
