Nikolai Melnikov

Intensely and for a long time Valery was looking for an occasion for achievement. Seventeen years of boring life have formed a scornful gait among the young man in protest towards an eventless world. But ordinary everyday difficulties came, followed by the responsibility for making decisions. And it turned out that everyday life is not just past days. This is real life.

Fourteen-year-old Vera Telegina sees the sea, which she had dreamed of since childhood. She is here only because her parents were repressed and she is left alone. The police chief Stavridi, having learned about the girl's misfortune, places her in a boarding school. Vera has to go through a lot. But with the concernment of new friends and sympathy of adults Vera survives until the spring of 1953, when the long-awaited telegram from her parents arrives.

The July days of 1917 in Petrograd. Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets, including the elderly and children. They are marching with red banners, singing songs. And suddenly, machine gun fire is heard from the attic. The dead and wounded fall to the pavement. And immediately detachments of mounted Cossacks poured out of the alleys... Andreika, the son of a St. Petersburg worker, miraculously survived this altercation. But little Elena's mother was killed. That's how Andreika got a little sister. The Provisional Government issues a decree on Lenin's arrest. There are spies all over Petrograd. One of them, Ensign Kolokov, disguised as Uncle Vitya's janitor, settled not far from Andreika's house.