Khabarovsk region. Taiga. Pavel Likhovtsev, a senior ranger and bear hunter, keeps an apiary in the taiga and brings up his eldest son Zhenya as a real peasant. However, with the advent of the nineties, the apiary is ruined. Pavel and his family are forced to go to Khabarovsk in search of a better life. At this time, in Khabarovsk, there is a redistribution of spheres of influence - all power and all resources are transferred to the OCG "Obshchak" - a gang that will soon become the largest criminal group in the world.
A horrific car accident turns a married couple's lives upside down. Artist Maria's husband, businessman Kirill, becomes disturbingly perfect. Is he repenting his mistakes and trying to make up for what he almost lost forever, or is it all a figment of Maria's injured imagination? A series of increasingly strange coincidences and signs suggest that Maria can no longer trust herself.
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.
Sergiy and Katya will have to fight against the ferocious folklore evil spirits - the genetically modified Serpent Gorynych, a gang of brownies who terrorize people, and also repulse Viy himself, who is trying to take power into his own hands. They will continue their personal struggle: Katya will try to rid Sergius of very bad habits, and Sergius will try to melt Katya's heart.