A drama set at the end of the Forties and the beginning of the Fifties. In a distant garrison town, life proceeds at a measured past. The officers drink and debauch, while the soldiers serve. Meanwhile accidentally unleashed human emotions are suffocated by the atmosphere of cruelty and hypocrisy.
A young teenage boy zealously tracks down criminals in this allegorical drama. Using the code name of Plumbum, Ruslan Chutko (Anton Androsov) delights in the pursuits of lawbreakers before informing the police, and he even turns in his own father when he catches him poaching fish. The questions are left to the viewer whether or not Plumbum is a crusading hero or a scoundrel. Western audiences may find the premise implausible, but children were known to inform on their own parents under the regime of Josef Stalin and others.
Colonel Karas lives with his wife, Larisa, a gynaecologist and their son, Andrey in a large house in the city. Apart from his demanding job in the military, the colonel loves to hunt and fish, which takes him away from home for long periods of time. However, it is his love of other women that is the real cause of his absences and his marital problems. With this example to follow, it is no surprise that the children are also proving unlucky in love. Daughter Veronica has fallen in love with the wrong man while son Andrey is following in his father's footsteps and gaining a reputation as a ladies' man. When the colonel is told by his superiors that his family is to be relocated to a small flat, he decides the easiest solution would be to marry Andrey off.
The action takes place in Leningrad n the time of "perestroika" during the 1980's. Tatyana is a beautiful Russian nurse who is underpaid at her hospital job, so she becomes a prostitute catering to international tourists. She becomes well paid in dollars, and helps her ailing mother survive. Tatyana's international clients tell her about the life in other countries, so she accepts a marriage in order to escape from the grim Soviet reality. Even though she is married to a decent man abroad, she still suffers being labeled an ex-Soviet prostitute, and her new life is full of new troubles.
1947 ... The Savchenko family returns to Moscow from evacuation - husband and wife with Kostya's little son. They settle with Grandma Kostya in a huge communal apartment. Street meets the boy with a flock of local boys. Then there were: the division of the territory with the "Sretensky"; trophy movie “Girl of my dreams”; a school with separate education, camp discipline and essays about the border guard Karatsyup. And the monetary reform of 1947, when all of their savings depreciated in an instant, and the boys let out boats from banknotes in puddles.
Parfenov's documentary is about a brilliant scientist and engineer, born in Russia, but only known on the other side of the ocean. The invention of modern television changed the history of mankind. The invention has an author, who is almost unknown in his homeland. Vladimir Zworykin, born in Murom, a Russian American, was the person who created distant wireless transmission of images.