Polina Nechitailo

Plucked from an orphanage as a literal love slave, the now adult Natalija (a luminous Kseniya Kutepova) serves her ape-like husband by tending his prized cow—whose milk they sell to customers on passing trains. When hubby suddenly drops dead, however, Natalija’s narrow life of cows and rails finally starts opening up. Dumping his body at the local hospital, dropping by church to say a few prayers and trading in the cow for a pet goat, she slowly eliminates all trace of his former hold on her, searching out a new life in the freedom that emerges.

In pre-Soviet Russia, Boris Savinkov leads a terrorist faction of Socialist-Revolutionary Party members responsible for the deaths of governors and ministers.

August 1980. The Soviet authorities are preparing Moscow for the Olympic Games and expelling unreliable citizens from the city. One such citizen is the talented cellist Arseny Chaika, who ends up in the village of Protasovo with his rabbit. Meanwhile, in Moscow, foreign journalist William Smith is looking for him for an interview.

The series is set in the Russian Empire during the second half of the 19th century, against the backdrop of social upheaval and the Russo-Turkish War. At the heart of the story is the romance between Sofya, a student at the Institute for Noble Young Ladies, and the married Count Vorontsov.