In a bleak and oppressive totalitarian society ruled by Big Brother, personal freedoms are nonexistent and surveillance is constant. Art is mocked and destroyed, and imagination is considered a serious illness. In this grim world, a brilliant mathematician engages in a forbidden romance with a colleague and learns about a secret resistance. He is faced with a choice - to join or betray it.

Moscow, 1952, mid-October, the XIX Congress of the CPSU had just ended. A communal apartment on Bolshaya Pirogovka. In one of the rooms lives the Petkevich family: Ariadna with her husband Boris and her parents, professor of philosophy Peter Kazimirovich and his wife Angelina Fyodorovna. For those few months that remained until Stalin's death, the family experiences a series of dramatic events. But on a background of terrible time, antisemitism, fabricated "case of doctors", denunciations and snitches, there are people who live their lives without losing dignity.

The Tsar is having his daughter Zabava marry a charmingly handsome and a handsomely charming Paul, a rich heir and a foreign fancy pants. However, it's a bit of a challenge, since Zabava wants a marriage of love, not of calculation. Her unexpected encounter with sailor Ivan, a simpleton yet an honest and endearing guy, messes up Paul's plans of snatching the crown. Deeply in love with the princess, Ivan enlists help from the residents of an enchanted forest to build a Flying Ship which would then take him and his beloved away. The brave sailor is in for serious confrontation with the sneaky Paul, who's using dark magic to bring his unwanted opponent down. However, true love is going to win this battle: with the evil mastermind punished, Ivan and Zabava step aboard the magic Flying Ship and set sail towards a new common dream of theirs.