Anatoli Yefremovich Novoseltsev works in a statistics institution, whose director is an unattractive and bossy woman. An old friend of his, Yuri Grigorievich Samokhvalov, who gets appointed assistant director of the institution, wants to make Novoseltsev the head of the department but encounters objections from Ludmila Prokopievna Kalugina, the director. Samokhvalov then advises Novoseltsev to lightly hit on the boss. Ironically, Novoseltsev and Kalugina fall in love with each other...
Olga Voznesenskaya is a silent screen star whose pictures are so popular that underground revolutionaries risk capture to see them. She's in southern Russia filming a tear-jerker as the Bolsheviks get closer to Moscow. Although married, she spends time every day with Victor Pototsky, the film's cameraman. Gradually, it comes to light that Victor uses his job as a cover for filming White atrocities and Red heroism: he's a Bolshevik. He asks her for help, and she discovers meaning in her otherwise flighty and self-centred life. Love blooms. Will the Red forces arrive in time to save them from a suspicious White military leader? Will she find courage?
The central character of the play, Fedor Protasov, is tormented by the belief that his wife Liza has never really chosen between him and the more conventional Victor Karenin, a rival for her hand. He wants to kill himself, but doesn't have the nerve. Running away from his life, he first falls in with Gypsies, and into a sexual relationship with a Gypsy singer, Masha. Meanwhile, his wife, presuming him dead, has married the other man.
Platon Ryabinin, a pianist, is traveling by train to a distant town of Griboedov to visit his father. He gets off to have lunch during a twenty minute stop at Zastupinsk railway station. He meets Vera, a waitress, after he refuses to pay her for the disgusting food he doesn't even touch and misses his train due to police investigation of the incident. His passport is then accidentally taken away from him by Andrei, Vera's fiancé, and his money is stolen as he waits for the next train to Griboedov. Vera learns that Platon is about to get sentenced and sent to prison in the Far East for a car accident he isn't guilty for. During the few days that Platon has to spend in Zastupinsk he and Vera develop feelings for each other...
A popular middle-aged writer is warned by a fortuneteller that he will die in exactly 24 hours. He then meets a man, who claims to be him. The writer uses this bizarre situation to change his life and take revenge.
An engineer in charge of the production line of a factory in Moscow is sent to a small town to try to specify the distributor the new dimensions of a mechanic part they need. But in this town everybody seems to be crazy (a secretary who works naked, a group of people take the engineer as a rock & roll player, etc) and, in addition, this man is witness of a suicide, so he is trapped inside the town.
In the new Russia, former middle class citizens find themselves out in the dumps. Literally. They build homes, elect their own government, work, beg, scavenge, date and fight all while living in a huge city dump. Some try to beat the odds and return to society, but it seems that there is only one place left for them to go...
The small town agog Hussars entry. Love between cornet and the young actress suddenly faces intrigue made by a St. Petersburg bureaucrat. The actress father dies after being involved in this game and perspectives look dark... But evil will eventually be defeated by the nobility, loyalty and love.