Valentina Egorenkova

A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.

Marina (Alyona Babenko) is a journalist contemplating retiring, bored of writing stories of serial killers and murders that are front page news one day, and then are quickly forgotten the next. At a large house a lawyer is holed up, police are in the front garden, snipers on the roof and the lawyer asks for Marina. She’s a little surprised by this as she and the lawyer have only crossed paths a few times during her career, but agrees to go to the lawyers house. Arriving at the house she’s confronted by the large police presence, she’s given a quick debrief of the situation and requested not to go into the house. She declines and enters the house. Just inside the front door is the lawyers wife, she tell Marina that he’s lost it and locked the children in their rooms and that he’s going to kill them all.

Shirokov, an engineer and inventor at an electromechanical plant, becomes a victim of street chaos and is hospitalized for an extended period. Upon learning of the incident, his colleagues do everything they can to ensure that Shirokov's latest invention becomes a part of his beloved plant.

Old village doctor Ruben Azaryan is going to operate a sick child, although he feels bad. Perhaps this is the last operation in his life. He remembers his youth, the institute, the student Maro in love with him, the war, the front and the first love - nurse Svetlana, who died during a raid on their hospital. Then marriage to Maro, a difficult job as a village doctor. One day he refuses to have an abortion for one widow. The widow commits suicide from shame. Her death still torments Azaryan. But hundreds of people he saved are also remembered, which means that life was not lived in vain ...

The invaders are leaving the northern town of the young Soviet republic. The brave underground activist Alexei Ilyutinsky infiltrates a musical troupe organized to entertain the White Army command and boost the morale of the population. The new horn player, who has no musical ear whatsoever, passes on the White Army's defense plan to the Reds and saves Bolshevik Makeev, the former chairman of the provincial executive committee, from being shot.

It was the last days of June 1942. The fascist troops were tearing towards Sevastopol, and fighting was already going on in the city itself. Ships of the Black Sea Fleet had already broken through to Sevastopol more than once, delivering replenishment, ammunition and weapons. And now, destroyers "Daring" and "Stremitelny" receive a new order to go to Sevastopol. This way is known to sailors well enough, but the fascists repeatedly mined the only fairway to Sevastopol, and enemy aircraft constantly attacking destroyers. At the cost of losing the "Daring" sailors manage to break through to Sevastopol. But the hardest tests fall to the sailors on the way back, when overloaded with wounded "Stremitelny" returns to his native port.