Vladimir Batalov

The events in the film take place in pre-revolutionary Russia. A riot of workers of a large porcelain factory is taking place. After the burning of one of the shops, Grunya's father dies in the fire. The owner of the factory caused the fire in order to obtain a fine from the workers. Grunya urgers the workers to fight, but is injured, yet she still urges the people not to give up.

The movie tells about the first years of Nazism. In the center of the plot is a German student graduating from an institute and receiving a diploma with a gold medal for success in science. The same is honored by his Jewish friend Joseph Voltmeyer. During the solemn ceremony, Nazi students provoke a fight, beat Joseph and Ruddy, who stood up for him.

Collective farmers of the Volga region decide to create the first female fishing team. Her hardworking and neat Varvara Kladova, a quiet and gentle woman suffering from adultery with Stepan's husband, becomes her head. Having overcome the first difficulties, women are ahead of the brigade of men. And this makes Stepan look at his wife with different eyes.

A group of impoverished Russians living in a shelter near the Volga.

On April 1944, Joseph Stalin orders the Red Army to liberate the Crimea from the German occupiers. The Wehrmacht's local commanders beg Hitler to allow them to retreat from the vulnerable position, but he refuses. After a fierce battle, the Soviet forces destroy the German and Romanian units defending the peninsula and retake Sevastopol.

Film deals with Stakhanovite movement. Old miners try to sabotage young man's plan to renew methods of getting coal.

Life is short and full of oppression, but that doesn't mean Parasha can't find love and laughter when she leaves her country home to take a job as a maid in the overcrowded, overworked, and underpaid world in the big city.