Military doctor General Klenski is arrested in Stalin's Russia in 1953 during an anti-Semitic political campaign accused of being a participant in so-called "doctors' plot".

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...