A Unesco World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg, which survived a 900-day Nazi siege in World War Two, is today under threat again: over the past several years, Russia's new capitalists have demolished over two hundred historic buildings in the city. Retracing Dimitry Likhachev's eponymous article, the film draws parallels between the Siege of Leningrad and the defense of medieval Russian cities, as described in the chronicles. Returning to the present, it compares today's destroyers of history with foreign invaders.