One day, doctors Speransky and Nikulin made an outstanding scientific discovery: they discovered the bacillus of indifference and ignorance. To describe its action, one of them selflessly instills it in himself.

The film is a touching story about an Uzbek family who gave shelter to 14 kids evacuated during the World War II while their own child was at the battlefronts.

An idealistic, sophisticated young woman meets a rough-around-the-edges, blue collar man and rejects him, only to find out later that they are destined for true love together, despite the fact that he cannot now pass his certification test after she threw him out of her adult education class.

Woven around the daily lives of two children, nine-year-old Nastenka and five-year-old Katia, this is a story of the 17 months' siege of Leningrad and of the people and families shattered by the war, their homes bombed and destroyed, their lives in a constant anticipation of the advancing German army and air raids.