A young singer from Buryat-Mongolian collective farm is sent to Moscow to study. Despite his strong voice, he fails a music exam. After the police station he becomes a soloist in a choir and a police sergeant, while studying music reading and dreaming of a conservatory.

The young composer Mikhail Glinka performs his new work at a soiree at earl Vielgorsky's house. However, the public is accustomed to Western music, and reacts coldly to the creation of the composer. This makes him very sad, but soon he decides to go learn the art of music in Italy. After returning from Italy, he is full of desire to write national Russian opera. Vasily Zhukovsky proposes a subject: a feat of Ivan Susanin. Tsar Nicholas I change the name of the opera to A Life for the Tsar and assigns a librettist - Baron Rosen. Acquaintance with the future co-author shocked Glinka: Rosen speaks Russian with a noticeable German accent. The premiere was successful, but Glinka was still not entirely happy with the libretto: "False words were written by Rosen". When Nicholas I learned that Ruslan and Lyudmila was written on Pushkin's subject, he sees it as sedition. The bitter experience of the composer brighten his supporters.

Based on the short story by A. P. Chekhov. Beggar 18-year-old beauty Anna marries a rich 52-year-old official to help her father and brothers. After the death of the mother, the father drinks, the brothers go hungry. For the sake of her relatives, she is ready for anything, even to become the wife of an elderly, rude, vulgar and hated Modest Alexeyevich.

The piano tuner Murkin, an elderly and sickly man, sets out in the morning to find his boots, in which his neighbor's overnight guest has mistakenly left.

Russian Empire, the middle of the XIX century. Aged, beggar dramatic actor Lev Gurych Sinichkin, in search of work, wanders through the cities with his young daughter Liza. They dream that Lisa someday will succeed on stage and become a famous actress.

Based on the novel of the same name in the verses of Yevgeni Dolmatovsky. Together with hundreds of other boys and girls, Komsomol members Kolya Kaitanov, Slava Ufimtsev, Alyosha Akishin, Lyolya and Masha came to the construction of the first stage of the Moscow metro. They are united by the romance of the feat, the desire to always be on the most difficult and dangerous site. A romantic and heroic story about the Komsomol members of the 1930s, about the fate of the generation that endured the construction of the first stage of the Moscow Metro, the war, the post-war reconstruction of the country.

The imperious old woman Mavra Tarasovna, the mother of the Moscow merchant Amos Panfilovich Baraboshev, is looking for a general groom for her granddaughter Polyxena.

Born in Volzhsky, raised by a strict and domineering grandmother, Ekaterina lost her mother at an early age. Rare encounters with her father, an old, distinguished captain, shaped her into a strong and uncompromising character. War broke out. Without hesitation, Ekaterina went to work in a hospital. There she found her first love, which also brought her first disappointment. After the war, having graduated from university, Ekaterina became an engineer and head of a river port section. She had a complicated relationship with the head of the shipping company. When he was dismissed from his job due to justified complaints, Ekaterina realized that she had lost the person closest to her forever.

Lipa and Vera had been friends since childhood. Now, having finished their boarding school, each of them faces her own path in life. Tormented by poverty, Lipa is forced to marry the old, dull, and cruel Tolokonnikov. However, she cannot bear the tyranny of the cowardly official for long. Leaving her husband, she departs from Rasteryaeva Street. Vera's life turned out differently. Fleeing with a hussar, she spent several turbulent years, but, exhausted, she returned once again to Rasteryaeva Street. And nothing had changed there.