Ivan Ryabinin

The action takes place during the years of the Civil War in the Urals. It is difficult for the young woman Nadia Korneeva to make sense of the events unfolding around her. Having endured much grief and gone through numerous trials, she decides to join a Red Guard unit.

In the summer of 1942, the Soviet army is fighting the Germans on the Don River. Young lieutenant Ogarkov gets lost in the steppe and fails to deliver a redeployment order. For that, he is sentenced to death. Now, another soldier has to lead him across the steppes to his death.

The civil war separated families on opposite sides of the barricades. How to understand this situation for a young girl who is being raised by a rich aunt, while her father leads a partisan detachment.

The film is about the youth who joined the ranks of the Komsomol in the early 1920s. The protagonists of the film are residents of a small town in southern Russia.

Based on the play of the same name by M. Gorky, staged by the Central Academic Theater of the Soviet Army.