Theft at St. Isaac's Cathedral

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?

2nd series. Theft at St. Isaac’s Cathedral

February 3, 1903. The terrifying howling of the February St. Petersburg blizzard was accompanied by a chilling report: overnight, in St. Isaac’s Cathedral, a criminal used an axe to cut out from the icon’s setting a diamond crown of the Savior Not Made by Hands! The capital is shocked by this daring and cynical crime. To solve it is a matter of honor for the new head of the investigative department—Fedor Ignatyevich Lipov, counselor to the investigative office. While everyone was hunting for the diamonds of Isaac, the dangerous political criminal Tulupov—the SR bomber—escaped straight from the station.

Cast:

Yury Elifteryev — Composer and Sound Engineer

Sergey Mardar — Narrator, Shiryaev, Oboleshchov, Tulupov, Grechikha, Senior clerk in the Klyave shop, Father Vasily.

Gennady Smirnov — Lipov, Stetsinsky, Alexander Kosulin, Klyave, Petr Malinovsky, Sergey Malinovsky, Head of the security office, Polishchuk, Junior clerk in the Klyave shop, Duty detective police.

Mikhail Chernyak — Klopovsky, Yurovskikh, Krestovozdvizhensky, City Governor Kleigels, Detective agent Afanasyev, Volodya Lipov, Clerk in a pawnshop, Father Artemiy, Chief of a department of the Foreign Ministry, Paperboy of the “Peterburgskiy listok,” Koval’da, Supervisor of the anthropometry office.

Tatyana Kolganova — Nadezhda Arkadyevna, Varya Lipova, Maria Kosulina, Maid in the pawnshop, Nadyka Ponomaryova.

Lilian Navrozashvili — Viola, Dun’ka