Anya worked as a librarian at a maritime school that trained sailors for sailing in extreme latitudes. She noticed Ilya Pokrovsky among the most diligent visitors to the reading room, but very soon discovered that Ilya used the reading room to sleep at the table, barricaded with volumes of the classics of Marxism-Leninism. The building that occupied the maritime school, the former Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna, greatly contributed to the development of romantic relationships, and Anya and Ilya did not have time to look back when they fell in love with each other... They were young and confident that their dreams would certainly come true. And a little more than ten years remained from the twentieth century...