In July 1942, in the Second World War, the rearguard of the Russian army protects the bridgehead of the Don River against the German army while the retreating Russian troops cross the bridge. While they move back to the Russian territory through the countryside, the soldiers show their...
A thief named Egor, having served a term in prison, goes to the country to meet his pen-friend Lyuba, a kind genial village woman. Egor comes to love Lyuba sincerely. Now he has friends, work and a beloved woman, he decides to break with his criminal past and start a new life. However, his former...
Two reserved people, almost resigned to their loneliness, found each other at the Soviet-era sea resort on the late autumn. Long dinners with senceless conversations transform into a love story.
Vasily Muravin, 50, a teacher at the Moscow Institute of Management, is experiencing a crisis. At work, the place of the head of the department is replaced by the more pragmatic, but limited person Valentin Romanovsky. At home, his wife Lida, who earns at work more than her husband, habitually...
In the remote Ukrainian village of Dykanka, handsome but poor Vakula loves the beautiful Oksana, but she's holding out for a wealthy prince, and her father doesn't think much of him either. On Christmas Eve she sends him on a ridiculous quest for dancing shoes that takes him all the way to the...
A sadly humorous story about a Siberian tractor driver, Ivan Rastorguyev, traveling with his wife to a Black Sea resort, and about their first visit to Moscow.
A chronicle of life in a small village in the Baikal Region on the eve of World War I and at the time of the October Revolution. The age-old foundations are crumbling, the process of social stratification is underway and, as a result, some people go to defend the revolution, and others - to fight...
Pavel Ivanovich Chichikov plans to buy the titles to “dead souls” and use them as collateral to obtain a large loan. He comes to a small provincial town and begins to proposition the local landowners. These landowners are revealed to be so petty and avaricious that not even Chichikov’s...
Eleven comedic vignettes featuring conversations – some important, some less so – held in restaurants over coffee and cigarettes (how quickly time flies – cigarettes are banned in Russia’s restaurants now). The conversations are candid, and even veer into the territory of murder. In the...
He considered his family life perfect. Normal, and sometimes big wages quite satisfied a beautiful and gentle wife. The child didn't cause much trouble. All that was needed for his happiness was available. But the wife is gone. She left not to another, but left, so as not to be unhappy.
Two high school kids meet in class and fall madly in love with each other. Unfortunately, His father and her mother had a history of their own between them which creates uneasiness in both of them. Also because of that, the boy's mother is very jealous and tries to separate them. The only person...
The years of the tsar’s adolescence and youth were permeated with deadly danger coming from some of the Boyars, the rebellious Streltsy and Tsarevna Sophia who aspired for power. But already at that early time Peter demonstrates a profound, bright intellect, a strong will and the sense of...
Match factory repairman Parfen Loktionov is offered to become a shift foreman. The new position, on the one hand, is associated with increased responsibility, and on the other, with less earnings (the salary is “ten” less). The mother-in-law and wife insist that Parfen, usually submissive to...
