In the focus of the film is the fate of Varvara Basova, whose painfully soulless, philistine-gray existence, devoid of ideals and moral content. Relevant today, the picture sounds like a verdict to all who are mired in vulgarity, who have exchanged life for petty pleasures, profit, empty philosophizing.

Kira Georgievna is a famous sculptor. She has a loving husband, friends, and fans. She seems quite happy. But one day the past breaks into Kira's well-adjusted life: Vadim, her first husband, appears. In '37, he was repressed and spent 20 years in camps.

Taking advantage of his intellectual superiority, the teenager Valya Uspensky subtly and mercilessly takes revenge on others for small and big offenses. The young mathematics teacher Igor Aleksandrovich also falls into the field of his interests, whose intelligence and tact will properly influence the guy. But the young intellectual will suffer a crushing defeat in the seemingly ordinary everyday situation, which will be set up for him by his sweet, pretty classmate Ira - if only in order to once and for all teach the narcissistic jester a lesson.

After the events of 1905, the proletariat slowly retreated with battle. The Lenin headquarters of the leadership of the revolution was moved to Finland. There Lenin and Krupskaya live illegally in safe houses. Vladimir Ilyich works on his articles, occasionally his associates visit him, sometimes he goes to the city for meetings with his party comrades — Gorky, Kalinin, Krasin, and others. By all possible means, Lenin directs the activities of the Bolsheviks in Russia...

Teleplay based on the novel of the same name by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, staged at the USSR State Academic Maly Theater.