The eldest son, who left for St. Petersburg, where he works as a detective, comes to the family of a crooked merchant and shopkeeper Grigory Tsybukin. Parents decide to marry him - his son is already 28 years old. They find a poor, but beautiful, clean and modest girl who meekly marries an already worn-out and balding man from the city, decently "laying by the collar". There is a merry wedding, and the husband leaves, leaving another worker in the family...

Martha, a young teacher, suffers from persecution mania. The phantom of an organization like the KGB arises in her mind and gradually materializes. Fear turns into reality, which drives the heroine crazy.

On a holiday eve, everyone, especially one tired and chilly, does so need at least one living soul at one's side: it is bad to meet a holiday alone with oneself. Thus, on a New Year's Eve, the main characters meet, — a meeting of two solitudes. Chance brought two persons of disorderly lives together in a railway terminal.... kindling the hope for a normal, pure human life, the kind others have...

The returning soldier Kuzma Kadkin on the train tells how well he lived before the war, and that everyone in the area knows him. An accidental fellow traveler, a young mother, leaves her child, a one and a half year old boy, Kadkin, to run away at the junction for water, but lags behind the train. Kuzma has no choice but to bring the baby home...

1918. Workers from Petrograd come to Altai region to establish the first agricultural commune. In spite of the hostility of the local White Army cossacks the workers build houses, cultivate land. The poor peasants are turning towards the commune. However, White Army cossacks take vengeance on the members of the commune.

A little girl named Katherine saved one boy's life during the bombing in Leningrad while under the Siege in WWII. The boy cannot speak yet. So she gave him a name Seryozha and provided him with food and care. She was later adopted by the boy's father, who recognized his son.

A portrait of a Russian community in the late 19th century based on Chekhov's stories, featuring the author as observer and narrator.

Volkhov Front in 1942. The young political instructor of the counter-propaganda department of the headquarters of the division Rusanov is torn to the forefront. Together with an experienced warrior — captain Shaternikov — the hero gets to the forefront and transmits from the sound transmission programs addressed to German soldiers. And in the hours of calm passes several kilometers in order to see Katya, the signal woman of a neighboring sector of the front.

Antonina Vasilyevna, as a member of the bureau of the district committee of the party, was instructed to save the Leningrad children, whom the war overtook in the suburban camps. She took them to the Kirov region. After twelve days of hard travel, the children arrived in the village of Supryadki...