Unfolding over two days in 1924, the film depicts the dying Lenin, world revolutionary and father of the USSR, now powerless and isolated at his Gorki estate. Cared for by his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaia, sister Maniasha, his German doctor and several attendants, Lenin raves about his diminishing faculties, discusses the deaths of great figures (including Marx), rides a car to a picnic in a meadow and ponders his historic legacy.

Students Nadya and Valera fell in love with each other and began to live together. Their classmates envy them, and the lovers have continuous disagreements...

A ghost and a French marquis wander through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, encountering scenes from many different periods of its history.

Having arrived from the village to Leningrad, the heroine achieved everything she could dream of: she graduated from the Institute with honors, defended her thesis, built and furnished a cooperative apartment. Only here in private life she was not lucky: for some reason, do not hold near her man…

New forces are coming to St. Petersburg, where the events of the film are unfolding. They are nouveau riche, businessmen, and creators capable of restoring St. Petersburg to its former splendor. The easily vulnerable, intelligent inhabitants of the old town, who have become accustomed to their former troubles, enter into difficult relations with them...