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.
In the center of the story is the story of two people. He is the conductor of the famous symphony orchestra, giving a concert at a Russian military base. She is a journalist who came to make a report from the scene. From the first minutes of meeting them, feelings flare up, but their first romantic evening in a distant foreign country becomes the only one and completely changes their life. The hotel is captured by terrorists. For the main characters begins a real hunt. The only hope for salvation is the ex-husband of a journalist. Only now, the recently separated spouses have a tough and insoluble conflict. Now the fate of the heroes is in the hands of the one who always dreamed of revenge.
Student Artem falls in love with a young beauty from the Black Sea. Having lost his head, he drops everything and goes for his beloved to the Russian South, about which he knows nothing. At sea it turns out that the beautiful Ksyusha is already being looked after by two serious local competitors - a handsome sailor and a daring policeman. It seems that the naive student simply has no chance. Even the help of his new friends seems to only get in the way. But our hero is not going to give up: it means war!