Mariya Knushevitskaya

Based on the eponymous drama by L.N. Tolstoy. The television version of the performance by the Mossovet Theater.

About one of the most difficult weeks after the Civil War in a small Ural city in the spring of 1921, in which the situation was very serious. Famine is on the agenda; if seeds are not delivered to the general sowing, then not only the city, but the entire region will starve. To deliver them by rail, fuel is needed, which is also not available, and twelve miles from the city there is a forest where firewood can be prepared for the trains. In addition to all this, there is an unsolved counter-revolutionary conspiracy in the city...

The millionaire merchant Pazukhin quarrels with his son Prokofiy over the latter's attachment to the Old Believers and his second marriage to a young, poor girl. Prokofiy, eager to inherit his father's vast fortune upon his death, is distressed by this quarrel, especially since the state counselor Furnachev, who is married to Prokofiy's sister, constantly suggests to Pazukhin the idea of disinheriting Prokofiy. Upon learning this, Prokofiy, in order to secure the inheritance, shaves off his beard and puts on a frock coat, deciding to reconcile with his father.