The famous scientist, academician and art critic Andrei Ilyin, who survived with the Hermitage staff the harsh trials of the Leningrad blockade, returned to his hometown after many years. The whole life of Ilyin is connected with Leningrad. A life that in the distant years of World War II would have seemed to have no future, but which, despite the unbearable horror of hunger and devastation, continued only in the name of the future ...