Book one. Sisters

Beginning of 1914 Petersburg, “tormented by sleepless nights, stunning its longing with wine, gold, love without love, tearing and powerlessly sensual sounds of tango - a dying anthem <...> lived as if waiting for a fateful and terrible day." A young, clean girl, Daria Dmitrievna Bulavina, arrives in St. Petersburg for law courses from Samara and stops with her elder sister Ekaterina Dmitrievna, who is married to the famous lawyer Nikolai Ivanovich Smokovnikov. The Smokovnikovs houses a salon; various progressive personalities who talk about the democratic revolution and fashionable artists visit him, among them the poet Alexei Alekseevich Bessonov. “Everything died a long time ago - both people and art,” Bessonov says muffledly. “And Russia is carrion ... And those who write poetry will all be in hell.” The pure and straightforward Daria Dmitrievna is drawn to the vicious poet, but she does not suspect that her beloved sister Katya has already cheated on her husband with Bessonov. The deceived Smokovnikov guesses, says this to Dasha, blames his wife, but Katya convinces both that everything is untrue. Finally, Dasha learns that this is still true, and with all the fervor and spontaneity of her youth she persuades her sister to obey her husband. As a result, the couple parted: Ekaterina Dmitrievna - to France, Nikolai Ivanovich - to the Crimea. And on Vasilyevsky Island, a good and honest engineer from the Baltic Plant, Ivan Ilyich Telegin, lives and rents part of the apartment to strange young people who have “futuristic” evenings at home. On one of such evenings under the name "Magnificent blasphemy" Daria Dmitrievna gets; she does not like “blasphemy” at all, but immediately she liked Ivan Ilyich. In the summer, Dasha, heading to Samara for her father, doctor Dmitry Stepanovich Bulavin, unexpectedly meets Ivan Ilyich on the Volga steamer, by then already dismissed after working unrest at the factory; their mutual sympathy is growing stronger. On the advice of his father, Dasha goes to the Crimea to persuade Smokovnikov to make peace with his wife; Bessonov wanders in the Crimea; Telegin unexpectedly appears in the same place, but only in order to explain her love to Dasha and say goodbye to her before leaving for the front - the First World War began. "In a few months, the war completed the work of a century." The mobilized Bessonov perishes absurdly at the front. Daria Dmitrievna and Ekaterina Dmitrievna, who returned from France, work in a hospital in Moscow. Smokovnikov, reunited with his wife, leads to the house of a thin captain with a shaved skull, Vadim Petrovich Roshchin, who was seconded to Moscow to receive equipment. Vadim Petrovich is in love with Ekaterina Dmitrievna, trying to explain herself, but so far without reciprocity. The sisters read in the newspaper that Ensign I.I. Telegin was missing; Dasha is desperate, she still does not know that Ivan Ilyich escaped from the concentration camp, was caught, transferred to the fortress, alone, then to another camp; when he is threatened with execution, Telegin and his comrades again decide to escape, this time successful. Ivan Ilyich safely gets to Moscow, but meetings with Dasha do not last long, he receives an order to go to Petrograd to the Baltic Plant. In St. Petersburg, he witnesses how conspirators dump the body of Grigory Rasputin, whom they killed, into the water. The February revolution begins before his eyes. Telegin travels to Moscow for Dasha, then the young couple again move to Petrograd. The Commissioner of the Provisional Government Nikolai Ivanovich Smokovnikov enthusiastically leaves for the front, where he is killed by indignant soldiers who do not want to die in the trenches; his shocked widow is comforted by faithful Vadim Roshchin. The Russian army is no more. There is no front. The people want to divide the land, and not fight the Germans. “Great Russia is now manure under arable land,” says staff officer Roshchin. “Everything needs to be redone: the army, the state, the soul must be squeezed into us by another ...” Ivan Ilyich objects: “The district will remain from us, and the Russian land will go from there ...” On a summer evening in 1917, Katya and Vadim walk along Kamennoostrovsky Prospect in Petrograd. “Ekaterina Dmitrievna,” said Roshchin, taking her thin hand in his hands ... “years will pass, wars will subside, revolutions will quieten down, and only one thing will remain incorrupt - your meek, gentle, beloved heart ...” They just pass by the former the mansion of the famous ballerina, where the headquarters of the Bolsheviks are preparing, preparing for the seizure of power.

The second book. Eighteenth year

“Petersburg was terrified at the end of the seventeenth year. Scary, incomprehensible, incomprehensible. " In a cold and hungry city, Dasha (after a nightly attack by robbers) gave birth prematurely; the boy died on the third day. Family life goes wrong, non-partisan Ivan Ilyich leaves for the Red Army. And Vadim Petrovich Roshchin - in Moscow, during the October battles with the Bolsheviks, he was shell-shocked, he went with Ekaterina Dmitrievna first to the Volga to wait for Dr. Bulavin to wait for the revolution (by the spring, the Bolsheviks should fall), and then to Rostov, where the White Volunteer Army was formed. They do not have time - volunteers are forced to leave the city on their legendary "ice trip." Suddenly, Ekaterina Dmitrievna and Vadim Petrovich quarrel on ideological grounds, she remains in the city, he follows the volunteers to the south. Bely Roshchin is forced to join the Red Guard, get with her to the area of ​​battles with the Volunteer Army and, in the first case, runs to his own. He bravely fights, but is not satisfied with himself, suffers from a break with Katya. Ekaterina Dmitrievna, having received (knowingly false) news of Vadim’s death, leaves from Rostov to Yekaterinoslav, but doesn’t get there - the Makhnovists attack the train. At Makhno, she would have to be bad, but the former messenger Roshchina, Aleksey Krasilnikov, recognizes her and undertakes to patronize. Roshchin, having received a vacation, rushes for Katya to Rostov, but no one knows where she is. At the Rostov train station, he sees Ivan Ilyich in whiteguard uniform and, knowing that Telegin is red (which means a scout), still does not give him away. “Thank you, Vadim,” Telegin whispers softly and disappears. And Daria Dmitrievna lives alone in red Petrograd, an old acquaintance - the Denikin officer Kulichek - comes to her and brings a letter from her sister with false news about the death of Vadim. Kulichek, sent to Peter for reconnaissance and recruitment, engages Dasha in underground work, she moves to Moscow and participates in Boris Savinkov’s Union for the Protection of the Homeland and Freedom, and spends time in the company of anarchists from the Mamont Dalsky detachment to cover up; on the instructions of the Savinkovites, she goes to workers rallies, monitors the speeches of Lenin (who is preparing an attempt), but the speeches of the leader of the world revolution make a strong impression on her. Dasha breaks with both anarchists and conspirators, goes to her father in Samara. Telegin also illegally gets to Samara in the same White Guard uniform; he runs the risk of contacting Dr. Bulavin for any news from Dasha. Dmitry Stepanovich realizes that he is facing a “red reptile”, distracting his attention with an old Dashin letter and calling counterintelligence by telephone. They try to arrest Ivan Ilyich, he spa

flees and unexpectedly stumbles upon Dasha (who, without suspecting anything, was here all the time in the house); the spouses manage to explain themselves, and Telegin disappears. Some time later, when Ivan Ilyich, commanding the regiment, was one of the first to break into Samara, Dr. Bulavin’s apartment was already empty, the windows were broken ... Where is Dasha? ..

The third book. Gloomy morning

Night bonfire in the steppe. Daria Dmitrievna and her random companion bake potatoes; they rode in a train attacked by white Cossacks. Travelers go along the steppe towards Tsaritsyn and fall into the location of the Reds, who suspect them of espionage (especially since Dashin’s father, Dr. Bulavin, is the former Minister of the White Samara government), but it suddenly turns out that the regiment commander Melshin knows Telegin’s Dasha’s husband well and in the German war, and in the Red Army. Ivan Ilyich himself at that time was carrying cannons and ammunition along the Volga to Tsaritsyn, who was defending himself against the whites. When defending the city, Telegin was seriously injured, he was in the infirmary and did not recognize anyone, and when he came to his senses, it turns out that the nurse sitting by the bed is his beloved Dasha. And at this time, honest Roshchin, already completely disappointed in the white movement, is seriously thinking about desertion and suddenly in Yekaterinoslav accidentally learns that the train in which Katya was traveling was captured by the Makhnovists. Throwing a suitcase at the hotel, taking off his epaulettes and stripes, he gets to Gulyaypol, where Makhno’s headquarters are located, and falls into the hands of the head of the Makhnovist intelligence service, Levka Zadov, Roshchin is tortured, but Makhno, who is to negotiate with the Bolsheviks, takes him to his headquarters in order to the reds thought he was flirting with the whites at the same time. Roshchin manages to visit the farm where Alexei Krasilnikov and Katya lived, but they have already left for nowhere. Makhno concludes a temporary alliance with the Bolsheviks for the joint capture of Yekaterinoslav, controlled by the Petliurists. The brave Roshchin takes part in the assault on the city, but the Petliurites take over, the wounded Roshchin is taken away by the Reds, and he ends up in a Kharkov hospital. (At this time, Yekaterina Dmitrievna, freed from Alexei Krasilnikov, forcing her to marry, is a teacher in a rural school.) After leaving the hospital, Vadim Petrovich receives an appointment to Kiev, to the headquarters of the cadet brigade, to the commissar Chugay, who was familiar from the fighting in Yekaterinoslav. He participates in the defeat of the Zeleny gang, kills Alexei Krasilnikov and everywhere searches for Katya, but to no avail. Once Ivan Ilyich, already a brigade commander, met his new chief of staff, recognized him as an old acquaintance of Roshchin and, thinking that Vadim Petrovich was a white intelligence officer, wanted to arrest him, but everything was explained. And Ekaterina Dmitrievna returns to starving Moscow to the old Arbat (now already communal) apartment, where she once buried her husband and explained to Vadim. She is still a teacher. At one of the meetings in the front-line protagonist speaking to the people, she recognizes Roshchina, whom she considered dead, and faints. To the sister come Dasha and Telegin. And here they are together - in the cold, crowded hall of the Bolshoi Theater, where Krzhizhanovsky makes a report on the electrification of Russia. From the height of the fifth tier, Roshchin points to Katya to Lenin and Stalin present here ("... the one who defeated Denikin ..."). Ivan Ilyich whispers to Dasha: “A sensible report ... I really want to, Dasha, to work ...” Vadim Petrovich whispers to Katya: “Do you understand the meaning of all our efforts, shed blood, all unknown and silent torments ... There will be peace we are rebuilt for good ... Everyone in this room is ready to give their lives for this ... This is not fiction - they will show you scars and bluish spots from bullets ... And this is in my homeland, and this is Russia ...