The Bisected Empress

The beginning of the last century. The Silver Age. St. Petersburg. The youngest European capital is getting richer and prettier. Architecture, the sciences, and art are flourishing. But, like its dazzling palaces, the city has both a ceremonial façade and hidden “black staircases.” In a prosperous city, crime grows quickly. And now the investigative police of St. Petersburg is a powerful political force.

Winter of 1903. The old chief of the investigation—an honest career servant—is about to retire due to illness. Who will take his place? The slick careerist and bribe-taker Klopovsky, or the knight of duty and honor Lipov? Who will protect the fragile beauty of the old world and stand against the challenges of the cruel and predatory new 20th century that has just begun?

1st series. The Severed Empress

Frosty days in St. Petersburg. The city has frozen, bound by cold and ice. Honest people stay home and don’t show their faces in the streets. And only the mazurkas are fearless no matter what! At night, right under the constable’s nose, someone stole money and jewelry from the safe of the jeweler Chapsky. And in Peterhof, the villains robbed the Tsar’s pavilion Ozёrki. They raised their hand against the statue of the Empress herself! In short, affairs for the capital’s investigative police are piling up—there’s no end to them.

The production team included:

Yury Elifteryev — Composer and Sound Engineer

Sergey Mardar — Narrator, Shiryaev, Oboleshchov, Ulitsky, Steptka the Orderly, Colonel Pleshko, Grigory Kononov

Gennady Smirnov — Lipov, Stetsinsky, Matuzov the Police Officer, Dr. Treiger, Grandfather Vasily, Konstantin Kononov, Vashchuk, Merchant Fufaev.

Mikhail Chernyak — Klopovsky, Yurovskikh, Krestovozdvizhensky, City Governor Kleigels, Detective agent Afanasyev, Volodya Lipov, Constable Zabrodin, Chapsky, Officer Gornostayev, Prokopiy the Lackey, Stepan Kononov, Mazilkin, Nikolai Kononov.

Tatyana Kolganova — Nadezhda Arkadyevna, Varya Lipova, Ulitskaya, Lyubka Metla, Mazilkina, Anna Kononova

Lilian Navrozashvili — Viola, Dun’ka