Vasili Sofronov

Saint Petersburg, 1858. A group of composers known as The Five meet at Balakirev's. Young Modest Mussorgsky, both a civil servant and a musician, has become a fixture there. He tells about the first opera he plans to compose. Then he goes to the country where he discovers the lowly conditions of the peasants and the bloody conflicts with the rich land owners. He works on Gogol's 'The Marriage', trying to render into music the natural accents of the play's naturalistic dialogue. But his efforts do not pan out. On the other hand, he starts writing his opera on the story of Boris Godunov. The Marinsky Theatre refuses to stage the work. The Five, and Mussorgsky among them, are libeled and the group starts disintegrating. When 'Boris Godunov' is finally performed in 1874, it is a popular success.

Russia, 1875: In Riazan’, Dr Pavlov is summoned to a landowner who refuses to accept the inevitability of his death; to Pavlov’s dismay, he orders the destruction of a beautiful apple orchard. 1894: Experimenting on dogs, Pavlov tries to comprehend the interaction between nerves and external signals governing digestion. In 1904, he formulates the principles of conditional reflexes. When Zvantsev, an opponent of Pavlov’s materialist worldview, leaves the laboratory, the scientist hires Varvara Ivanova who becomes his most reliable assistant. 1912: Pavlov receives an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University. 1917: Despite Pavlov’s political scepticism, the Bolshevik administration treats him with great respect.

About the struggle of the red Army and the revolutionary workers of Petrograd against the white guards in 1919....

July-December 1917, the country is undergoing a revolution. "The pillars of society" are alarmed by the looming on them menacing events. Some of them are ready to fight with the revolution, others — among them industrialist Vasily Dostigaev trying to "adapt»

Propaganda film enhancing the role of I.V. Stalin in the defense of the city of Tsaritsyn (subsequently Stalingrad, at present Volgograd) by the red army during the Russian civil war.