How did a former convict and future co-founder of the buffer Far Eastern Republic first end up on Lake Baikal, and then share a Petrograd living space with Lenin himself? What did the Buddhist lama Agvan Dorzhiev warn Lunacharsky and the Bolsheviks against? What happened to the Buryat plant that made the best cement east of the Urals? The film tells about the role of some natives, residents and historical "guests" of the Baikal region in the large-scale transformations of the revolutionary year of 1917 in Russia.