London, England, May 2000. The peaceful life of elderly Joan Stanley is suddenly disrupted when she is arrested by the British Intelligence Service and accused of providing information to communist Russia during the forties.
Vasily Pronchishchev and Vasily Chelyuskin were young lieutenants of the Russia fleet, who set out from Yakutsk along the Lena River to the Arctic Ocean on a sailing ship under the leadership of the commander Vitus Bering in the summer of 1735. Contrary to the imperial prohibition, incredible trials and deadly danger lying ahead of all the members of this expedition, a young girl enamored with one of the characters got onto this ship. However, neither storms or severe northern frosts and hunger were able to stop them, since fulfilling of their duty, reaching of the most northeastern point of Eurasia and putting of the vast Arctic territories on the world maps were their main purpose in life.
In December 1825, distinguished members of the Russian military, most of whom were quite affluent and of noble lineage, took it upon themselves to stir revolution against the autocratic and tyrannical Czar Nikolai I in the wake of his not honoring the drafting of a constitution for the Russian people. The revolution failed miserably and the conspirators (known as the Decembrists) were weeded out by the czar himself. One by one, each of the conspirators confess and are systematically exiled to the harsh winters of Siberia, slated to work and wither in a prison/mine. The wives of the conspirators are faced with the prospect of leaving the bosom of wealth and family (including their own children) to be with their husbands in the brutal Siberian locale. If they agree to this, they face having their illustrious social stations stripped away and certain disdain from everyone around them...
Three naval cadets accidentally get possession of a secret diary that was stolen from Bestuzhev, a vice-chancellor of Russia. If this diary ever gets abroad, the consequences for the country would be grave. The cadets are trying to return the papers to their owner, but there are others who want to get the papers...
It is a time when Rome rules the world with the power of life and death in their hands. The province of Roman Palestine is a bubbling cauldron of rebellion and control. And on this greater canvas Luke, narrates a story of wonder, amazement and impact... The world is anticipating this moment in history but no one can imagine God touching His creation in the form of a little baby named Jesus. Much is recorded in the Gospels about Jesus' miraculous birth, to a young virgin named Mary, in Bethlehem, but little is known about his quiet growing up in Nazareth. Joseph, his adopted father, seems to have died well before Jesus turns 30 and begins his ministry.
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.
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 amazing offer can be worked to his advantage on them. Some stall, some refuse for no obvious reasons, some promise and then renege, and others want “in on the deal.” In the end, Chichikov, having concluded that the landowners are a hopeless lot, leaves for other regions.
The social ferment in late 19th century Russia which led to the 1917 Russian Revolution is movingly portrayed in this lengthy historical drama, which is very faithful to the 1907 novel The Mother by the celebrated Marxist writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). In the story, "the mother" (Inna Tchourikova) has no other recourse than to watch her decent, kindly husband turn into an animalistic, drunken brute as a result of working in the inhuman conditions of a steel mill in the town of Sormovo. When he begins to express his suppressed rage by beating her, she is defended by her teenaged son Pavel (depicted Viktor Rakov as an adult, Sacha Chichonok as a boy). After his father's death, Pavel is forced to go to work in the same factory. However, Pavel and his friends begin investigating Marxism and socialist thought, and work to organize their fellow workers.