The author's sharply journalistic film reveals the social and moral aspects of "dissidence", which became a sign of life in our society in the 60-80s of the 20th century, when the country hastily rejected the best representatives of science, literature, art, depriving them of freedom, citizenship...
Portrait of writer A. Sinyavsky (Abram Tertz).
Portrait of journalist A. Ginzburg.
Portrait of lawyer B. Zolotukhin.
Portrait of poet and songwriter Yu.
Portrait of philologist Larisa Bogoraz.
Portrait of KGB colonel Ya.
Karpovich.
Portrait of one of the organizers of the 1974 "Bulldozer Exhibition", artist O. Rabin.
Portrait of poet I. Brodsky.
View of a construction site from the window of a Moscow apartment.
Construction equipment at work.
Panorama of part of the construction site.
Bookshelves in the apartment, with portraits of Yu.
Galanskov and Yu.
Kublanovsky on the shelves.
Announcements of poetry evenings in December 1963, with the names of the speaking poets.
Newsreel from the early 1960s: people at a book market in Moscow.
People listen to the speakers and ask them for autographs. A. Sinyavsky gives an interview (synchronously).
Newsreel from the late 1950s: Khrushchev N.S. delivers a speech in the Kremlin about young writers and poets.
People in the hall applaud Khrushchev.
Khrushchev continues delivering his speech.
People in the hall applaud Khrushchev.
The doors of the cafe open.
Tables in the hall, with overturned chairs on the tables.
A singer performs a song, people walk past.
Piano keys, a cup of coffee on the table.
Girls sing along with the performer.
View of the interior of the cafe.
Domes and walls of an abandoned church.
Newsreel from the late 1920s - early 1930s: construction of a railroad track.
People carry earth on stretchers.
Laying rails on sleepers.
Workers drive in wedges to secure the rails.
Newly laid railroad sleepers.
A newspaper is lying on a cafe table.
Bogoraz L. gives an interview (synchronously).
Photographs by Daniel Yu.M. Bogoraz L. gives an interview (synchronously).
View of the prison wall.
Prisoners during a walk (Sinyavsky's memories are heard synchronously).
Sinyavsky gives an interview (synchronously).
Khrushchev Nikita Sergeevich - statesman and political figure
1920s 1930s 1958-1960
Moscow
Summer
Newsreel from 1966: a queue in Moscow at the Detsky Mir store, girls dressed as Snow Maidens exit the store.
The sales area of a women's clothing store.
A woman tries on a dress in front of a mirror.
The hands of a person opening a bottle of champagne.
People at a table in a cafe raise their glasses.
A New Year's tree in the St.
George's Hall of the Kremlin.
General view of the St.
George's Hall during the New Year's celebration.
Father Frost with a boy in his arms. A. Sinyavsky gives an interview (synchronously).
A scene from a satirical play depicting a trial of dissidents, the actors quote words from the speech of the prosecutors at the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial.
Photographs of the courtroom during the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial.
A scene from the play.
Newsreel from the 1960s: L. I. Brezhnev in the Kremlin.
The monument to V. I. Lenin under a veil before the opening.
Soldiers run, raised on alert.
Soldiers uncover a rocket launcher.
An airplane in the sky.
An officer gives the command.
The wreckage of Powers' airplane on the ground.
Brezhnev greets the leaders of the union republics in the Kremlin, kisses D.A. Kunayev. B. Zolotukhin gives an interview in the courtroom where the trial of Yu.
Galanskov and his comrades took place in 1966 (synchronously).
The cover of the book about the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial, published abroad. A. Ginzburg gives an interview (synchronously).
The entrance to the building where the trial took place.
Portraits of General F.G. Grigorenko.
Poet Yu.
Kim gives an interview (synchronously).
Zolotukhin gives an interview in the courtroom (synchronously).
Newsreel from the 1970s: a view of a part of the building of the Supreme Court of the USSR. A sign on the building.
A session of the Supreme Court of the USSR. Faces of the participants in the session.
A participant in the session speaks from the rostrum.
The participants in the session speak.
Voting of the members of the Supreme Court.
Kim Yu gives an interview.
Photos by lawyer Kallistratova S.V.
Brezhnev Leonid Ilyich - statesman and political figure Kunayev Dinmukhamed Akhmedovich - Soviet Kazakh statesman and political figure
1960 1966 1970s
Moscow
Winter Summer
Kim Y. takes a guitar and performs the song "Lawyer's Waltz" (synchronously).
Zolotukhin B. listens to the song, smokes a pipe.
Ginzburg A. crosses the street with a dog.
Views of Moscow embankments.
Newsreel from the 1960s: Sholokhov M.A. speaks from the rostrum (synchronously).
Prisoners work in a quarry.
People applaud Sholokhov.
Panorama of a part of Red Square.
View of the Execution Ground and St.
Basil's Cathedral (from above), recollections of Bogoraz L. sound synchronously.
Bogoraz L. gives an interview (synchronously).
Newsreel from the 1960s: children perform in firefighter costumes on Red Square.
A boy climbs a ladder.
Sinyavsky gives an interview (synchronously).
Newsreel from 1968: signing of Soviet-Polish documents, Gomulka V., Cyrankiewicz Yu., Podgorny N.V., Brezhnev L.I., Kosygin N.A. Interior view of the cafe hall.
Portrait of Kushin E. Musical instruments in the cafe hall.
People's faces.
Artists perform Okudzhava's song "Blue Trolleybus".
Dancing couple.
Fragments of a painting.
A cup on a cafe table, the table is shaking, the roar of tank engines can be heard.
Newsreel from 1968: a Soviet tank column moves along the road to Prague.
People on the roadsides shout curses.
An officer on the turret of a moving tank.
Tanks move along the streets of Prague.
People in the back of a truck with the national flag of Czechoslovakia.
People kick the tank treads.
Tanks on a square in Prague (view from above).
Tanks drive along the streets of Prague.
People follow the tank, trying to set it on fire.
The tank's gas tank is burning.
Horses on the Anichkov Bridge in Leningrad.
The monument to Peter I in Leningrad.
Sinyavsky gives an interview (synchronously).
Brezhnev Leonid Ilyich - statesman and political figure Podgorny Nikolai Viktorovich - statesman and political figure Kosygin Nikolai Alekseevich - statesman and political figure Gomulka Wladyslaw - Polish statesman and political figure Cyrankiewicz Jozef - Polish statesman and political figure
1960s 1968
Moscow Prague
Spring Summer
A dramatization of the arrest of protesters on Red Square in 1968. Karpovich Ya. gives an interview (synchronously).
Bogoraz L. gives an interview (synchronously).
Newsreel from the late 1950s: demolition of old buildings in Moscow.
An excavator bucket with construction waste.
General view of the block being demolished (top), Kim Yu.
Kim Yu. gives an interview (synchronously).
Ginzburg A. enters a cafe, sits down at a table (his memories are synchronously played).
Newsreel from the 1960s: prisoners during lunch.
A prisoner is taken to the operational unit.
Photograph by Daniel Yu.
Views of Moscow.
Newsreel from the 1960s: people on the streets of Moscow.
Buses and cars on the streets.
People walking down the street.
View of the cafe hall, a Brezhnev mask lies on a chair by the piano, a Stalin mask lies next to the drum.
Artists perform a comic song about Brezhnev and Stalin (synchronously).
View of the Dzerzhinsky monument on Lubyanka.
Views of the KGB building on Lubyanka.
Artists perform a song.
Newsreel from 1970: footage from the foreign television program "Voices of the Russian Underground." Journalist Cole B., expelled from the USSR, gives an interview.
Cole on a Moscow street.
The face of writer Amalrik A. Cole walks down the street.
Amalrik gives an interview to foreign correspondents.
A street of a European city.
Karpovich Ya. gives an interview (synchronously).
Newsreel from the 1970s: faces of leading workers.
View of a festive event.
People wave their hands in greeting.
Amalrik Andrey Alekseevich - writer Cole Bill - American journalist
1950s-1970s
Moscow Western Europe
Winter Summer
Panorama of the cafe hall.
Newsreel from the 1970s: Brezhnev L.I. on a hunt in Zavidovo.
The artist performs a song about a spy.
Staging of the KGB chase of a dissident.
Courtyards of houses, flights of stairs.
Chase on the roof of a building (staging).
View of one of the streets of Moscow (from above).
Newsreel from the 1970s: Brezhnev on a hunt in Zavidovo.
Yakir P.I. and Krasin V. at the trial in 1973. Kim Yu. gives an interview (synchronously).
Photos of Yakir P.I. Karpovich Ya. gives an interview (synchronously).
Newsreel from 1973: panorama of the hall where Yakir and Krasin's press conference was held after the trial.
A correspondent takes photos.
Krasin speaks at the press conference (synchronously).
Yakir P.I. answers correspondents' questions (synchronously).
The press listens to Yakir's speech.
Yakir continues his speech.
A pile driver drives piles at a construction site.
A panoramic view of part of the construction site (above).
An artist from the "Third Direction" theater performs a song (synchronously).
Newsreel from the 1970s: cars drive up to the Sheremetyevo airport building.
A bus with passengers drives to an airplane (A.A. Galich's poem "Uezhayete-uezhayte..." is played simultaneously).
People climb the steps onto the airplane.
Entrance to the airplane, panoramic view of the airport building.
The USSR coat of arms on the façade of the airport building.
A flying airplane. A. Ginzburg gives an interview (synchronously).
Brezhnev Leonid Ilyich - statesman and political figure Yakir Petr Ionovich - historian
human rights activist Viktor Aleksandrovich Krasin -- economist
human rights activist
1970s 1973
Moscow
Winter Autumn
Ginzburg A. talks about her expulsion from the USSR (synchronously).
Newsreel from 1979: a press conference of dissidents expelled from the USSR after arriving in the USA (Ginzburg's recollections are heard synchronously).
Ginzburg walks down a city street with a dog on a leash.
People on the streets of Montmartre.
People looking at paintings by street artists.
Artist Rabin O. gives an interview (synchronously).
Bulldozer caterpillar.
Photographs of artists participating in the "Bulldozer Exhibition".
Photographs of the dispersal of the "Bulldozer Exhibition".
Paintings painted by Rabin O. in Paris.
Rabin in the window of his apartment in Paris.
The Moulin Rouge cabaret in Paris.
View of a part of the Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe.
People listen to a performance by poet Brodsky I. at a poetry evening in Paris.
Rabin climbs the stairs of his studio.
A street in Paris.
A cup on a cafe table.
Entrance to the cafe, portrait of V. Delone, portrait of I. Kaplun, portrait of V. Marchenko, portrait of A. Marchenko, portrait of G. Pod'yapolsky, portrait of I. Gabay.
People carry a portrait of A.D. Sakharov.
Brodsky speaks about Sakharov's death (synchronously).
Newsreel of December 1989: flowers and wreaths near the wall of the house where A.D. Sakharov lived.
People's faces.
The coffin with Sakharov's body, installed in the funeral hall for farewell, people walk past the coffin.
Sakharov's widow E. Bonner near her husband's coffin.
People's faces.
The queue to the funeral hall.
The funeral procession behind Sakharov's coffin.
General view of the spontaneous funeral rally on the occasion of Sakharov's funeral.
People at Sakharov's funeral.
Sakharov on the TV screen during the broadcast of the meeting of the Congress of People's Deputies. M.S. Gorbachev argues with Sakharov.
View of the construction site from the window of a Moscow apartment, perspective of city blocks.
Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev - statesman and political figure Andrey Dmitrievich Sakharov - physicist scientist
political figure
1979 12.1989
Moscow USA
Spring Winter