The film is based on the eponymous book, written by two former street gangsters - Grigori Belykh and Leonid Panteleyev. Film is set in the 1920s St. Petersburg, Russia. Streets of the city are full of the homeless boys. They are caught to be raised and educated at the correction school named after Dostoevsky. The boys are street smart and difficult. But the faculty stands up to the challenge. The teaches are being devoted and caring, and gradually win the respect of the most difficult kids. The school director Vicknixor is a refined intellectual, who becomes a role model for the boys.

The movie is set during the last days of a foreign intervention against Soviet Russia. Police are searching everywhere for a Bolshevik named Brodsky but cannot find him. Meanwhile, a man named Michel Voronov serves as a teacher to a rich woman's son, Zhen'ka.

The naive hero, having read clever books, marries a prostitute with the aim of re-educating her and collides with the famous Sergei Eisenstein, ending in the most unexpected and fatal way...

The naive hero, having read clever books, marries a prostitute with the aim of re-educating her and collides with the famous Sergei Eisenstein, ending in the most unexpected and fatal way...

The naive hero, having read clever books, marries a prostitute with the aim of re-educating her and collides with the famous Sergei Eisenstein, ending in the most unexpected and fatal way...

Kirill Vorobyov's life is simple and nothing special: after graduating from school and serving in the army, he works at a factory as a mechanic. But one day he meets Alena, a student at one of the Moscow universities. And for the first time, Kirill begins to feel constrained and uncomfortable in the company of intelligent girl he likes.

Borja and Seva live on the bank of the Dnieper. In summer, during vacations, they help adults by delivering letters. Suddenly they learn that a poacher has appeared in the village. The boys start their own investigation.

The beginning of the 30s of the last century. A leak of classified information was found at the Soviet shipbuilding plant. Arriving under the guise of a scientist, the legendary chekist Karotin begins to unravel the threads of the conspiracy of the fascist spy organization. He is helped by inexperienced but active local detectives. Mastering the basics of the counterintelligence, they fall into a situation the other one funnier.

The beginning of the 30s of the last century. A leak of classified information was found at the Soviet shipbuilding plant. Arriving under the guise of a scientist, the legendary chekist Karotin begins to unravel the threads of the conspiracy of the fascist spy organization. He is helped by inexperienced but active local detectives. Mastering the basics of the counterintelligence, they fall into a situation the other one funnier.

Having lived for his pleasure most of his life, floor polisher Ivan Karetnikov, on the threshold of his 60th birthday, did not for the first time leave his next wife himself, but she abandoned him, moreover, in public. In addition to these troubles, he was fired from his job, replaced by a mechanical polisher. In this difficult moment, Karetnikov remembered the first wife, and then the second and third. But turning to each of them, he seems to begin to lose hope of seeing compassion for himself.