Zakhar Darevskiy

With an international chess tournament in progress, a young man becomes completely obsessed with the game. His fiancée has no interest in it, and becomes frustrated and depressed by his neglect of her, but wherever she goes she finds that she cannot escape chess. On the brink of giving up, she meets the world champion, Capablanca himself, with interesting results.

An American circus performer finds herself the victim of racism after it is revealed that she's the mother of a mixed-race child. In the midst of the public scandal, she finds happiness, love, and refuge in the USSR.