The protagonist finds out that some children were left behind in a sinking school, and is slowly driven mad as he tries to save them. A parable on the theme of the Last Judgment, numerous catastrophic events reveal a certain ambiguity in their origins, accompanied by the terrible suspicion that the things going on are some kind of a performance or theatrical production.

On a holiday eve, everyone, especially one tired and chilly, does so need at least one living soul at one's side: it is bad to meet a holiday alone with oneself. Thus, on a New Year's Eve, the main characters meet, — a meeting of two solitudes. Chance brought two persons of disorderly lives together in a railway terminal.... kindling the hope for a normal, pure human life, the kind others have...

After the concert, the popular singer, having boarded the train, discovers that her jacket is missing, and with it her passport, according to which she must go abroad on tour. Two stowaways, posing as police officers, undertake to help the singer.

In the Siberian taiga village of Wolf's Burrows, the Strogov family lives — Matvey with his wife Anna and his parents. Through the fate of this peasant family, a picture of the life of the Siberian region during major historical events — the Russo-Japanese War, the 1905 Revolution, the October Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War is outlined.

A portrait of a Russian community in the late 19th century based on Chekhov's stories, featuring the author as observer and narrator.

The farm's chairman took the late secretary's teenage son into his house.

An idealistic, sophisticated young woman meets a rough-around-the-edges, blue collar man and rejects him, only to find out later that they are destined for true love together, despite the fact that he cannot now pass his certification test after she threw him out of her adult education class.