The Collector is using his massive collection of curiosities and arts to provoke and manipulate people into a different state of mind. The Collector's daughter is building her own collection, she is having an affair with three guests of her father, and they are about to make some strange discoveries.
Fifty-year-old Vladimir Ivanovich Prokhorov, relieved of his worldly possessions, takes a journey back in time. Accompanied by a traveling companion barely half his age, he revisits the people and places of his youth and witnesses the dark forces that shaped the 20th century.
At twenty-two years, the heroine was left alone with the child. Will she not lose the desire to remain faithful to her husband and wait for his return from prison? Can the temptation of loneliness be overcome after a failed marriage and struggle with myself, with my natural desires to love and be loved?
Martha, a young teacher, suffers from persecution mania. The phantom of an organization like the KGB arises in her mind and gradually materializes. Fear turns into reality, which drives the heroine crazy.
Svetlana Vasilievna is a young, energetic woman who often changes jobs, accustomed to achieving the goals that she has set for herself in life. Her next desire is to marry a "creative, intelligent" person. After a lengthy search, she chose an elderly, but well-mannered, intelligent official Vladimir Dmitrievich Lobanov. Svetlana believes that with the help of connections and sober calculation, you can achieve everything: well-being, respectability, even personal happiness. She does not notice that the fulfillment of her desires does not at all make the person close to her happy. The payback turns out to be unexpected and terrible.
The purposeful village guy is indifferent to entertainment, but strictly follows the daily schedule, studies languages and exact sciences. There are two goals in his life - to become an astronaut and win the heart of his former classmate.
Anatoly Novoseltsev is a mousy single father and office stumblebum working at a statistics bureau in Moscow. In the hopes of being promoted, he is coaxed into charming his disagreeable and seemingly unfeeling boss, Ludmila Kalugina, or "Meany" as she's otherwise known by her subordinates. Helped by his colleagues Olya and Yura, Anatoly attempts to ease the yoke of Ms. Kalugina, and what follows in the wake of his graceless manoeuvres is completely unforeseen, as he awakens a side to her not yet known, even to herself..
Dyula, the son of four Orbak, is a young man, like everyone at his age looking for love and at the same time dreaming of complete freedom. He loves parents, but he is terribly tired of notations and teachings. And by and large, like many young people, they themselves do not know very well what they want ...