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

Russian troops occupied Paris. Russia became the first power in the world. Now everything seems possible. Young winners, guards officers, are sure that equality and freedom will come - here and now. For this they are ready to sacrifice everything - position, wealth, love, life ... and the country itself.

The main characters are ordinary 30-year-old men who live in an ordinary Russian village, where it is always bad to work, where there is always no money, where they drive moonshine, for which they pay with food or firewood. They did not study at institutes, do not speak foreign languages, do not understand politics and consider the words “Internet” and “glamor” as curses. For such words, they can give in the face. They see life mainly on the TV screen. Yes and that - black and white.

Young Chechnya war veteran alienates himself from his friends and family because of his burned face. When he has to help find his war-time friend, he manages to get back to life again.

Is secret cooperation with the government a respectable thing?.. This is the question Nikolay should answer for himself.

The beginning of the 1960s, a period of aggravation of the confrontation between the USSR and the USA. In the most difficult weather conditions and with malfunctions on board, the first Soviet nuclear submarine K-3 sets off for a hike under the ice of the Arctic Ocean in order to surface exactly at the North Pole.