This story starts in 1980 in Paris as the memories of Andrei Borodin, a Soviet agent, take the action back to 1943 during the Teheran meetings of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill. A high-ranking Nazi officer developed a plan to assassinate the three world leaders in order to undermine the Allied forces. He commissioned the German agent Max Richard to carry out his plan, but it failed miserably due to the quick action and thinking of Andrei. While in Teheran, Andrei met a French woman, Marie Louni, living in the city and they had a brief but intense affair. Nearly four decades later, the Nazi officer has been captured - but not for long. Freed by terrorists, the officer is hunting down the German agent who failed to carry out the planned assassinations. Max lives at Françoise, a young French woman, who hides him.

The film consists of two parts: “Insomnia” and “Departure”. We shall meet Lev Tolstoy in the final years of his life at Yasnaya Polyana. We shall see him surrounded by his family, friends, acquaintances and absolute strangers who were coming to the great man and artist from all over the world. We shall hear “the voice of his thoughts”. In his sleepless nights, we shall follow his memory of the happy youthful years and the crucial, hard ones. We shall witness Tolstoy’s tragic departure from Yasnaya Polyana and his death at an obscure little station of Astapovo.

Vikings attack Kuksja's village, and end up bringing him along on their ship because they believe he is good luck. After proving himself in a battle against the dreaded Danes, chief Torir bestows upon him the name of Einar and takes him in as his son. Back home in Norway the men are received as heros, but new trouble arises when Kuksja falls in love with the beautiful Signy, who is already betroth to the vicious Sigurd.

Matvey Pestsov, an employee of the District Party Committee, proposes to introduce collective contracting in one of the collective farms. The administration and the chairman of the collective farm Volgin are against the experiment. But Pestsov does not give up.

The second part of Soviet filmmaker Sergei Bondarchuk's epic biography of John Reed. It is October 1917 and the American journalist has found himself and his wife, Louise Bryant, in Petrograd on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution.