Once in the fierce winter, student Roger McKay forced the shopkeeper to distribute food supplies to the Indians. Hiding from justice, the hero meets Neyda in a remote land - an orphan, brought up in the family of a merchant of stolen whiskey, who wants to quickly marry her to a rich neighbor. Roger and Neyda, having fallen in love with each other, decide to secretly get married and leave these places. But Roger is justified - and the hero, along with his beloved, returns to his house.
The movie reminiscence of the Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko about the military childhood when he one reached the Siberian Winter station where he was waited by the grandmother. The way was unusually long, cold, hungry and angry.
The film is based on Sergei Narovchatov’s poem. Vassily Buslayev is an epic Russian hero who rose to defend the freedom and independence of his people. The strength and power of this son of a Novgorod governor, his friendship with simple folk enraged and scared the rich, fat merchants of the city. When they learned that the young man was setting out on a march to save his native land from the enemy, they couldn’t be more happy: how could he defeat a foe so mighty! But Vassily overcomes all intrigues and brings his expedition to a victorious end. He returns home a hero, and not alone but with a sweetheart. When a threat of enemy invasion again looms over Novgorod, people come and beg Vassily to defend their native land.
Lovely telegraph operator Masha Stepanova is a sanitary nurse. During a training alarm, she meets a taxi driver Alexei (Alyosha) Solovyov. He reads verses to a girl and invites her to the theater. But at the appointed time, Alyosha doesn't come, and Mashenka finds him, helps to recover. Young people fell in love with each other, but Alexei was too frivolous, and brings the girl a lot of sorrows and insults. Because of Alexei’s hobby for another girl, Masha breaks up with him. But she will be able to convey her faithful and true-hearted feeling through years of separation and the hardships of wartime, and when they meet again at the front of the Finnish War, Solovyov realizes what a gift of fate was meeting him with this girl.
