Against the background of historical events - the Decembrist uprising and the conquest of the Caucasus, the Russian-Turkish war and the coronation of the last tsar - the reader is presented with descriptions of romantic love stories, and pictures of army and landowner life, and difficult family relationships... But private, at first glance , events allow the writer to indulge in deep reflection about the fate of Russia in the past century, inextricably linked with the present century, about the Russian intelligentsia, about honor and duty to the Fatherland, about the painful trials that he will have to endure...