The action is set in 1970 as the Soviet Union (and the entire progressive world) are preparing to celebrate Lenin's centenary. Not to be outdone, the camp commander decides to have the prisoners put on a play about Lenin's life. However, the ensuing preparations turn everything upside down and seem to offer a God-given chance to plot an escape.

Nikolai (played by Sergei Dontsov) has been fired from his job as a music teacher and has to live in the gym until he finds a place to stay. Finally, he gets a communal room in the apartment of Gorokhov (Victor Mikhalkov). The room's previous inhabitant, an old lady, has died a year ago, and yet her cat, Maxi, is still in the locked room, healthy and fat. Soon, Nikolai and his neighbours discover the mystery: there is a window to Paris in the room. That's when the comedy begins - will the Russians be able to cope with the temptation to profit from the discovery?

The hero of the film, afraid of losing both his wife and his mistress, is ultimately left alone.

A murder has occurred, for which the famous artist Botsanov takes responsibility. However, the matter was not as simple as it might seem at first. The investigation of the crime is entrusted to an experienced investigator.

A story of a Moscow's apartment building that is slowly falling apart, literally. First, the hot water has been cut off by an old man from Asia, who could not stand it being wasted. Then the roof is starting to collapse. Finally, the electricity has been cut off. All the tenants of the building, no matter how different they were, find themselves in the same situation.

The hero of the film, afraid of losing both his wife and his mistress, is ultimately left alone.

Set around the Volga river, the story begins around 1900, when Russian peasants are let free and allowed to own their farmlands. But soon they suffer from losses during the 1917 Russian Revolution and the following Civil War. Then, the major national catastrophe is started by Stalin: his communist government kills millions of farmers and steals all their food supplies, causing the longest and deadliest famine all over central Russia during the 1920s and 1930s.

A group of Swedish tourists are on the way to a Russian village to witness the so called 'Festivity of Neptunus', in which the inhabitants take a dive in a hole in the ice. This tradition, however, does not exist at all. The inhabitants try to make a good impression by starting the 'tradition' to please the tourists.

Two detectives are fighting a criminal gang which is steeling goods from the abandoned radioactive area.

Closely based on Franz Kafka's book "Das Schloß", the movie shares the same action on a land surveyor who is called to a village to do a job that no one seems to have ordered. Once there, he takes up the struggle against bureaucracy emanating from the castle.