Viktor Arkasov

A Jewish tannery worker, Nahum Beychik, invents a machine that makes hard work easier in leather tanning. A private entrepreneur, former kulak Lopatin, tries to buy the invention and use it for his own selfish interests. Having met with a decisive refusal from Nahum Beychik, the kulak exploits the anti-Semitic sentiments of the backward part of the workers and, with the help of his accomplices, hooligans and truants, tries to kill the inventor.

1935. A plan is hatched at a railway depot to sabotage a record-breaking high-speed run that a young locomotive engineer, Mitya Orlov, has volunteered to undertake. The saboteurs attempt to cause a catastrophe by directing the trains of Mitya and his father, Vasily Orlov, toward each other on a collision course.

A father and son, both clowns, are to perform together for the first time, but the civil war separates them, and the elder Buldy, tempted for a moment to acquiesce to the White forces, casts his lot with the revolution.

A border guards are hunting a spy infiltrated to the USSR.

A funny story about a life of a big department store and its employees and customers.