Aleksandr Ilyinsky

The young teacher Lobanovich, who has just graduated from the seminary, comes to the remote Polessky village of Telshino to teach the peasant children to read and write. In the heads of seminarians persistently hammered into the idea that the Tsar-father endlessly cares about the common people, and the people respond to him sincere filial gratitude. Arriving in the village, the teacher saw a different picture. The Poleshuk people are beaten down, driven, living in mud, darkness, tightly entangled in a network of prejudices and superstitions....

The manager of the Belarusian collective farm Naideika Krasovich, inspired by the award at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition for the high flax harvest, gives her word to double the harvest. Many fellow villagers doubt her success, and only Grigory Pavlovich, the new director of MTS, who left his family in the city and came to the village at the call of the party, provides Nadeika with all kinds of support and excessive attention, because he loves and, it seems, is loved. In parallel to this story, a plot develops about the love of the tractor driver Zosya for the forester Yanka, who unrequitedly suffers for Nadeyka.