Six years after Michail Gorbachev set the Soviet Union on the path to democracy and economic reform, the nation is torn apart by a three day coup that changes the future of the Soviet Union forever. On the eve of these tumultuous events, Mikhail and Dalia arrive in Moscow to be married. She's Lithuanian. He's Russian, the son of Vladimir, a conservative army general. During the next three days, the lives of the young couple are profoundly affected by a war being fought on several fronts: at the Russian Parliament, where Mikhail must decide to take a stand and join Dalia at the barricades, and at home, where he must oppose his father who is too firmly entrenched in the Soviet system to accept either his son's marriage to a Lithuanian or the irreversible impact of glasnost on Russia. With the triumph of the pro-democracy forces and Mikhail's decision to make a stand with his generation, their confrontation is inevitable.