In July 1942, in the Second World War, the rearguard of the Russian army protects the bridgehead of the Don River against the German army while the retreating Russian troops cross the bridge. While they move back to the Russian territory through the countryside, the soldiers show their companionship, sentiments, fears and heroism to defend their motherland.

At the end of 1943, during the occupation in Odessa, a new specialist Kraft arrives at the shipyard and soon becomes a chief engineer. It never occurred to anyone that a Soviet intelligence officer was hiding under the guise of a leader showing official zeal. At the decisive moment, when the victorious offensive of the Soviet troops forces the German-Romanian invaders to leave Odessa, on the instructions of the Center, Kraft leaves with them for further work behind enemy lines.

In 1890s Western Ukraine, Ivan Didukh, a proud and ripe Galician farmer, has decided to abandon his ancestral home to emigrate to Canada in search of a better life. His final hours are clouded by both internal and communal discord as his village convenes to ceremonially mark his departure. The celebrations that echo those of a funeral, forecast the imminent death of a man estranged from his motherland, and of an antiquated way of life on the cusp of obsoletion.

David Motuzka, demobilized Red Army soldier, returns to his native village, hoping to see the changes caused by the revolutionary events. But he cannot see no improvement. The village is ruled by the kulaks and David's childhood friend Kornii Matiukha helps them.

In 1960, in Moscow, numerous cases of infection with purple pox were recorded. According to doctors, the virus came from eastern countries. In order not to create panic among the population, they tried to hide the fact of the epidemic. Doctors tried to cope with the disease, but the number of deaths increased, and information inexorably leaked into society ...

The war was over. Like many of her female friends, Sasha Potapova was left a widow. It was hard living without a man’s shoulder to lean on, without love and affection, yet no one had ever seen her crying or despairing. For her strong character, the fellow-villagers elected her a collective farm chairwoman. The work, with its cares and worries, helped all but forget about her personal misfortune and woman’s loneliness. And then she fell in love – a bittersweet, unshared love, but happy anyway…

Based on the novel of the same name by Mikhail Sholokhov, about the fate of people broken by the First World War, the October Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War in Russia (1917-1922), about the collapse of the foundations and ideals of the Don Cossacks of Russia at the beginning of the XX century, about the personal tragedy of the protagonist — Grigoriy Melekhov.