Aleksandr Sashin-Nikolsky

To save her family from disgrace and hunger, a young dowerless girl gets married to a rich old man, only to turn into an unscrupulous kept woman who forgets her close ones.

Russian Empire, the middle of the XIX century. Aged, beggar dramatic actor Lev Gurych Sinichkin, in search of work, wanders through the cities with his young daughter Liza. They dream that Lisa someday will succeed on stage and become a famous actress.

The young composer Mikhail Glinka performs his new work at a soiree at earl Vielgorsky's house. However, the public is accustomed to Western music, and reacts coldly to the creation of the composer. This makes him very sad, but soon he decides to go learn the art of music in Italy. After returning from Italy, he is full of desire to write national Russian opera. Vasily Zhukovsky proposes a subject: a feat of Ivan Susanin. Tsar Nicholas I change the name of the opera to A Life for the Tsar and assigns a librettist - Baron Rosen. Acquaintance with the future co-author shocked Glinka: Rosen speaks Russian with a noticeable German accent. The premiere was successful, but Glinka was still not entirely happy with the libretto: "False words were written by Rosen". When Nicholas I learned that Ruslan and Lyudmila was written on Pushkin's subject, he sees it as sedition. The bitter experience of the composer brighten his supporters.

Followed by his two sons, Chuk and Gek, an engineer-explorer heads for a geologists'camp lost in the Ural white wilderness. He plans to spend New Year's Eve there with Chuk and Gek, among his fellow-colleagues. However an undetermined incident has caused the occupiers to leave the place. When, to their amazement, the three adventurers discover the empty camp, they realize that they don't have enough food to return immediately and that they will have to join forces to survive for a few days without any outside help...

A young singer from Buryat-Mongolian collective farm is sent to Moscow to study. Despite his strong voice, he fails a music exam. After the police station he becomes a soloist in a choir and a police sergeant, while studying music reading and dreaming of a conservatory.

Lipa and Vera had been friends since childhood. Now, having finished their boarding school, each of them faces her own path in life. Tormented by poverty, Lipa is forced to marry the old, dull, and cruel Tolokonnikov. However, she cannot bear the tyranny of the cowardly official for long. Leaving her husband, she departs from Rasteryaeva Street. Vera's life turned out differently. Fleeing with a hussar, she spent several turbulent years, but, exhausted, she returned once again to Rasteryaeva Street. And nothing had changed there.

Born in Volzhsky, raised by a strict and domineering grandmother, Ekaterina lost her mother at an early age. Rare encounters with her father, an old, distinguished captain, shaped her into a strong and uncompromising character. War broke out. Without hesitation, Ekaterina went to work in a hospital. There she found her first love, which also brought her first disappointment. After the war, having graduated from university, Ekaterina became an engineer and head of a river port section. She had a complicated relationship with the head of the shipping company. When he was dismissed from his job due to justified complaints, Ekaterina realized that she had lost the person closest to her forever.

The imperious old woman Mavra Tarasovna, the mother of the Moscow merchant Amos Panfilovich Baraboshev, is looking for a general groom for her granddaughter Polyxena.

Fifth-grade students, misbehaving during an air-raid drill, smash a cabinet in the physics lab. Lev Prokushev, one of the perpetrators, takes a microscope eyepiece, which is soon discovered in Arkady Zubov's school bag. Arkady categorically denies any involvement in the mischief but refuses to name the culprit.

Together with hundreds of other boys and girls, Komsomol members Kolya Kaitanov, Slava Ufimtsev, Alyosha Akishin, Lyolya and Masha came to the construction of the first stage of the Moscow metro. They are united by the romance of the feat, the desire to always be on the most difficult and dangerous site.

The piano tuner Murkin, an elderly and sickly man, sets out in the morning to find his boots, in which his neighbor's overnight guest has mistakenly left.