This is a poetic film set in the times of Lenin's NEP. A ballet dancer steals a brooch and gives it as a present to another dancer. This is a crime of passion. A mysterious black ball is after the heroine. She runs away from it and manages to give the brooch in an exquisite pirouette movement, as shiny as diamond facets. What gives a stone its dazzling luster are its polished facets. But the real gem is love, and it's much harder to get than any diamond in the world.
Srubov forma parte de la CHEKA, la policía secreta que Lenin creó después de la revolución Bolchevique y que se encarga de arrestar, interrogar y hacer desaparecer a intelectuales opositores, aristócratas, clérigos y a sus familias. Ejecutados en el sótano del edificio, nadie recordará sus últimas palabras, son solo cuerpos anónimos. Diariamente la misma rutina, el tribunal improvisado, las ejecuciones... cargar los cuerpos en vagones. Srubov es frio, distante, sexualmente disfuncional y odiado por sus antiguos amigos y familia. Mientras intenta razonar sobre la naturaleza de la revolución y el propósito de la CHEKA, va enloqueciendo poco a poco.
A regular military call-up. Young guys, having got call-up papers and having passed a medical board checkup, enjoy themselves and spend the last days of freedom in different ways: some in discotheques, some in a company of friends outdoors, others are even carousing and scuffling. A colonel Nikitin (Yu. Nazarov) with a group of officers is ordered to accompany conscripts future marines - in a special train to the military service place, situated in the Far East. The whole trip takes several days. Right here, in the train wagons, with no dads and moms round, young conscripts are in for showing their worth and gaining their first experience of real army life.
