A boy from a remote Ural village, who grew up without a father in a large family, managed not only to survive the hardships of a wartime childhood and post-war devastation, but also to become at the origins of the creation of the Group A anti-terrorist unit, which would later become known as the Alpha Group.
Marusi's father dies on the operating table, and from that moment her life has changed dramatically. In search of work, the girl meets Alexei and his cousin Kostya. Both young men are not indifferent to Marusa - now she has to make a difficult choice. She still does not know that Kostya is the very doctor who unsuccessfully operated on her father.
An old man has three sons: the elder two are considered fairly smart, while the youngest, Ivan, is considered an idiot. One day the father sends the three to find out who's been taking the hay in their fields at night. The elder brothers decide to lie hidden in a haystack, where they promptly fall asleep. Ivan, meanwhile, sits beside a birch tree and plays on his recorder. Suddenly, he sees a magnificent horse come flying out of the sky. Ivan grabs its mane and holds on as the horse tries to shake him off. Finally, the horse begs him to let her go and in return gives him two beautiful black horses and a little humpbacked horse (Konyok-gorbunok) to be his companion.
