The largest house on the Arbat is between Nikolsky and Money Lane. Four former classmates live in it. Three of them: Sasha Pankratov, the secretary of the Komsomol cell of the school, the son of the elevator Maxim Kostin and Nina Ivanova - made up a close-knit group of activists in the school. They were also adjoined by the daughter of a famous diplomat, a Bolshevik with pre-revolutionary experience, Lena Budyagina. Fourth - Yura Sharok, son of a tailor. This crafty and cautious guy hates politics. In his family, the new masters of life are caustically called "comrades."

School is over. Now Nina is a teacher, Lena is a translator. Maxim graduates from the infantry school, Sasha studies at a technical university, and Jura studies at a law school. Vadim Marasevich, the son of a well-known doctor, adjoins their company, he marks in literary and theatrical critics. Schoolgirl Varya, Nina's sister. Beauty Vika Marasevich, sister of Vadim. They are sitting at a table, meeting a new one, 1934. They are young, they cannot imagine either death or old age - they were born for life and happiness.

But Sasha is in trouble. As a matter of fact, he was expelled from the institute and from the Komsomol. An unpleasant story, a trifle: on the anniversary of the revolution, a wall newspaper was issued, and some of the faculty authorities regarded the epigrams placed in it as a hostile sortie.

Sasha visited the Central Control Commission, and he was reinstated at both the institute and the Komsomol. But now - a two-hour night call, the Red Army, witnesses ... Arrest and Butyrskaya prison.

"Why are you sitting here?" Asked his investigator Dyakov at the first interrogation. Sasha is at a loss. What do they want from him? He has no disagreements with the party; he is honest with it. Maybe it’s about Mark Ryazanov, the brother of his mother — he is influential, the country's first metallurgist ...

Mark, meanwhile, talked about Sasha with senior people. Budyagin clearly understands: “they” know whose Sasha’s nephew. When a person is introduced into the Central Committee, they cannot but know that his nephew was arrested.

Berezin, the deputy of Yagoda (head of the OPTU), is better than Budyagin and better than Ryazanov that Pankratov is not to blame for anything. Honest, ideological guy. His case stretches much further and higher, leaving through the deputy director of the Sasha Institute Krivoruchko at Lominadze, deputy commissar of heavy industry (and people's commissar Ordzhonikidze). But even Berezin, a member of the board of the NKVD, does not know and cannot, of course, know what he thinks of Ordzhonikidze, a man of his inner circle, Stalin. But Stalin thinks this: they have long known each other, too long. We started in the party together. But the leader has no like-minded people, only associates. Sergo after the capitulation of the opposition did not want to destroy them. Wants to maintain a counterweight to Stalin? And what, what political goals explain the tender friendship of Sergo and Kirov?

Sofya Alexandrovna was ordered to come to Butyrka on a meeting with her son. Take warm clothes, money and groceries with you. So, Sasha’s sentence has been passed. All this time, Varya Ivanova helped her: she went for groceries and carried programs. But she didn’t go that evening — the next day they escorted Maxim and another cadet to the Far East.

At the station, Varya saw Sasha: he obediently walked between two Red Army men with a suitcase in his hand and a shoulder bag, pale and with a beard.

So, Sasha was sent. What is left of their company? Max in the Far East. And Sharok - and this is wild for many - works in the prosecutor's office. Yurka Sharok is the arbiter of fate, and the pure, convinced Sasha is an exiled!

Varya somehow met on the Arbat the beautiful Vika Marasevich with a smartish man. Vika invited to call and come in, although Varya never called her and never came to her. But then she went. And got into a completely different world. There - they stand in lines, live in communal apartments. Here - they drink coffee with liquors, admire foreign fashions.

For Varya, a new life began. “Metropol”, “Savoy”, “National” ... A native Muscovite, she had only heard these attractive names before. Only she is dressed poorly ...

A lot of new acquaintances. And among them - Kostya, the famous billiard player. He comes from Kerch, and Varia has never been to the sea. Upon learning of this, he immediately offers to go. Kostya is an independent, powerful man, he will not submit to anyone, will not drag his suitcase along the platform under escort ...

Returning from the Crimea, Varya and Kostya settle with Sasha’s mother, Sophia Alexandrovna. Varya does not work. Kostya does not even allow her to cook. She dresses with the best tailors, combes with the most fashionable hairdressers, they are constantly in theaters, restaurants ...

Sasha sent the first telegram to his mother from the village of Boguchany, Kansky District. The comrade by reference, Boris Soloveitchik, introduced him to the course of local life: in these places you can see anyone - the Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, anarchists, Trotskyists, national deviators. Indeed, on the way to the place, Sasha gets acquainted with a variety of people, and not all of them are interested in politics or ideology.

The place of exile for Sasha is determined by the village of Mozgovu, twelve kilometers from Kezhma up the Angara. He pays money for an apartment with meals, sometimes brings sour cream - repairs a public separator. The separator was made at the end of the last century, the thread was worn, and several times Sasha tells the chairman that it is necessary to cut a new one. The separator once again breaks down, the chairman accuses Sasha of intentional damage, and they swear heavily in public.

Explanations have to be given to the authorized NKVD Alferov. He interprets: the apparatus is out of order, nobody handed over anything to the chairman about the thread - yes, the women simply don’t know the words “thread”, “nut”, “roller” ... In general, they will give Sasha at least ten years for wrecking. In addition, the discredit of the collective farm leadership.

Immediately after the arrest, Sasha hoped that everything would be clarified soon and released, that he was clean, and the party did not punish the innocent. Now he understands well that he is powerless, but does not want to give up. I decided to respond to insult with insult, to spit - with spit. The conflict with the separator is somehow jammed. How long? Sasha is overwhelmed by grief: he grew up in the belief that he would build a new world, now he has no hope, no goal. The idea on which he grew up was taken over by soulless careerists, they trample on this idea and trample on people devoted to it. Teacher Nurzida, with whom he has an affair, offers him a future life option: after the link they will register, Sasha will take his wife's surname and get a clean passport, without a criminal record. Cockroaches, baked life? No, Sasha will never agree to such a thing! He feels that he is changing, and a fellow exile tells him that he should not sculpt a new one from the fragments of the old faith. You can either return to your previous beliefs, or leave them forever.

Berezin offers Sharoku to enter the Higher School of the NKVD. He refuses, as Zaporozhets takes him to the Leningrad apparatus of the NKVD. This confirms Berezin’s suspicion: some action is being prepared in Leningrad. Stalin is dissatisfied with the situation in the city, demands from Kirov repressions against the so-called members of the Zinoviev opposition, wants to unleash terror in Leningrad. For what? How to detonate terror throughout the country? Zaporozhets must organize such that Kirov will have to retreat. But what? Sabotage, explosion - Kirov cannot be fought for. The murder of one of Kirov's associates? Closer, but not that.

Berezin remembers well how in 1918, in Tsaritsyn, Stalin instructively told him: “Death solves all problems. There is no man, and no problem. ”

In the evening, Berezin first went to Budyagin and in a conversation briefly said that Zaporozhets, in the strictest confidence, was picking up his people in St. Petersburg. Budyagin fully appreciated what was said and handed Ordzhonikidze in the morning.

But Ordzhonikidze and Budyagin did not come up with what the personnel security officer Berezin immediately guessed.

Varya has difficulties with Bones - after all, in essence, drawing close to him, she did not know him. It turns out that he is married, although he allegedly got married because of registration. He is a player, today is rich, tomorrow will be the poorest of all. Can lose her herself. Enough! She has to go work. Friends arrange it at the Design Bureau of the Moscow Hotel as a draftswoman.

Bones are getting worse. They are strangers, and the best thing is to disperse. With Valya Alexandrovna and her communal neighbors, Varya increasingly speaks of Sasha, more and more often thinks of him. Yes, she appreciates her own and other people's independence, decides everything herself, is not careful, does not know how to deny herself pleasures - this is what I came across. Well, it's over with Bones, it's not too late to change your life. In a letter to Sofia Alexandrovna addressed to Sasha, she makes a postscript from herself.

Having read Varina’s lines, Sasha experiences a sharp, nagging sense of love and attraction to this girl. Still to come! But a fellow exiled frown who came to visit him was preoccupied. He brought bad news - on December 1, Kirov was killed in Leningrad. And whoever does this, we can say with confidence: black times are coming.