The story of the Podolsk cadets’ heroic stand outside Moscow in October 1941. Cadets were sent to the Ilyinsky line, fighting alongside units from the Soviet 43rd Army to hold back the German advance until reinforcements arrived. Hopelessly outnumbered, young men laid down their lives in a battle lasting almost two weeks to obstruct the far superior German forces advancing towards Moscow. Around 3,500 cadets and their commanding officers were sent to hold up the last line of defense outside Moscow. Most of them remained there for eternity.

By miracle he avoided death and returns to the house where he was born. In the house now lives the love of his life. But the hope for happiness turns sour with a terrible discovery: his beloved is the daughter of his enemy.

There is no single truth in love. Each treads their own path. Which should take precedence – passion or duty? How do we choose? And who gets to judge? These are the eternal questions, remorselessly thrust upon us by life. Anna Karenina made her choice, leaving her son Sergei to grow up struggling to understand why his mother took such a tragic and terrible path, and Count Vronsky haunted by the memory of the woman for whose death he still blames himself 30 years later. In 1904, in the aftermath of one of the battles of the Russo-Japanese war, Sergei Karenin and Alexei Vronsky find themselves thrown together in a remote Manchurian village, where fate offers them a chance to return to the events long past and, finally, to find the answers both have long been seeking.