Moscow, 1902: Ivan Osokin bids the woman he loves, Zinaida Krutitsky, farewell; she is leaving on a trip to the Crimea and he is not coming, professing his own poverty and in spite of her own frustrations. Wrestling with his decision not to go, he writes her every day, but receives only sporadic responses. After three months, she stops writing back, and through a chance encounter with her brother, he learns she is going to marry another man.
Devastated, he visits a magician he knows and, after relating the troubles of his life, expresses a desire to live his life over, but with the knowledge of what will happen, so that he can make the right choices going forward.
The magician informs him that
“you will remember everything as long as you do not wish to forget”
and through magical means, transports Osokin back to 1890, when Osokin was a boy in school.