Provincial town near Moscow. Here in a large communal apartment several families live. Each has its own concerns, its interests, its troubles and joys. A communal apartment is not just a habitat. This is a kind of section of society. They are all very different, members of this "communal dormitory": the intelligent Vera and the philistine Larisa, old-age pensioners who live their lives, and the invalid Lyra, who dreams of a happy life in faraway Australia, the soulless clerk Bozhok and the young scientist Victor, forced to look for tutoring . However, their fates are inextricably linked with events and difficult collisions taking place in the country, with a sense of instability, fear, anxious expectation: something must happen.