Rodka Gulyaev is a pupil of the Gumniskii rural secondary school. He on the bank of the river digs out the darkened old icon, and his grandmother Avdotya, an overbearing and cunning old woman, dissolves a rumor that the icon is miraculous, and her granddaughter is a saint.

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.

Two country boys move to Moscow. One becomes a construction worker who dreams of being an inventor, the other becomes a decadent poet.