Leonid Golovnya

The movie takes place in the late 1930s in the Far East. A group of pioneering surveyors led by Kirill Kostomarov is to lay the route of a railroad through remote taiga areas. To avoid unnecessary expenditure of human labor, Kostomarov proposes his own variant of laying - along the rocks, not along the floodplain of the river, as approved by the project assignment.

Since he was ten years old, Misha Kharlamov had dreamed of having his own apple orchard. Ulyana, the owner's daughter, loved Misha and believed in his dream. When the girl was given in marriage to someone she did not love, she lost her mind and left the village. Not finding Ulyana, Mikhail planted an apple orchard in memory of his beloved. One fierce winter he gave the orchard to people so that they could flood the stoves. And in the spring new shoots appeared on the cut trunks.

In the winter of 1922, the Rodionovs, Vasiliy Platonovich and his nephew Kuzma, came to the remote Siberian village of Baklan, disguised as teachers sent from the district center to organize and build a school. In fact, this is an old Bolshevik and a young worker, authorized by the GPU, and their main task is to find out the whereabouts of a large and very dangerous gang, led by a former Kolchak officer, who instills fear in local residents.