This is the second installment of a three-part series of autobiographical films about the director's life. The first, which won various awards for its maker, was entitled Zamri Oumi Voskresni and was later retitled Zari, Umri, Vokresni ("Freeze-Die-Come to Life"). At the end of that film, set at the conclusion of World War II, the young Valerka was striving hard to overcome the inertia of just getting by, along with his sometime friend Galiya. In this one, he is adjusting to Galiya's death and is back in school and is living with his mother, a prostitute. After a girl at the school is found to have been gang-raped, the headmaster chooses Valerka to be one of the scapegoats, though he had nothing to do with the deed. The punishment seems mild enough, he was simply expelled from school. However, after quarrelling with his mother about the incident, he takes to the road, and discovers a society so bleak, degraded and hopeless that it is a wonder he remained alive.
Ivan Yegorovich - a front-line soldier, secretary of the rural district party committee in Siberia - receives a directive on reclamation of the area, but he believes that irrigation work will disrupt the water balance and adversely affect crops. Not having received support in the regional committee, he goes to Moscow. The second storyline is the story of Krylov's complex relationship with Seraphim, whom he has loved since childhood. Having separated for many years, fate gives them the opportunity to start all over again.
