Acting
The heavy hand of Soviet censorship oversees the production of a Western. As a result, instead of exchanging gunfire, the cowboys send each other air kisses, and instead of drinking whiskey, they sit down to read some books.
An adaptation of Olga Frosh's novel about the life of Mihail Beideman.
The chairman of the factory committee of one of the Leningrad factories, Fyodor Gorbachev, a weak-willed man who was unable to completely overcome his petty-proprietor psychology, is visited from the village by his brother Sergei, a former kulak and trader. His arrival brings quarrels and discord into the friendly Gorbachev family. At Fyodor's request, the factory director hires Sergei, but demands a favor in return.
Engineer Dukalsky arrives from Moscow on the instructions of an underground anti-Soviet center to the Baltic Shipyard in order to take possession of the blueprints of a powerful ship engine. The pest meets the author of the project - a young and incorruptible self-taught master Ivanov. After a series of unsuccessful attempts to buy out or steal the drawings from the author, Dukalsky decides to take Ivanov with him. Criminal Investigation Officers will attack the trail of criminals.
A squadron of American warplanes, armed with gas developed by Corsican chemist Gannimer (dubbed "Napoleon Gas") flies to Leningrad. American workers inform soviet comrades about the impending catastrophe. But the air attack on the city has already begun, and the assault troops of the enemy capture one suburb of the city after the other. The Red Army is organizing the defense and reflects the attack of the enemy with gas-armed drones
This, the first Soviet depiction of Peter the Great, set the stage for what would become the post-Revolutionary line concerning the early Romanovs. Rulers like Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great were widely admired for their dedication to Russia and their absolute determination to enhance her position in the world. But praise for the hated later Romanovs conflicted too heavily with the very beliefs that had brought about the Revolution in 1917.
Central Asia during the Civil War. The Jarkent battalion of the Red Army, located in the Verny (now Alma-Ata), receives an order from Frunze to go to the Fergana region to fight the Basmachi. A group of kulaks, with the support of local merchants and beys, incites the unconscious, wavering mass of the Red Army to revolt. The anti-Soviet agitation of counter-revolutionaries, demagogically exploiting the mood of war weariness, provokes an open mutiny in the battalion.
The film recreates episodes from the December Uprising of 1825. Against the backdrop of the uprising, a love story unfolds between the Decembrist Annenkov and Polina Gebl.
