An adaptation of Olga Frosh's novel about the life of Mihail Beideman.

The chairman of the factory committee of one of the Leningrad factories, Fyodor Gorbachev, a weak-willed man who was unable to completely overcome his petty-proprietor psychology, is visited from the village by his brother Sergei, a former kulak and trader. His arrival brings quarrels and discord into the friendly Gorbachev family. At Fyodor's request, the factory director hires Sergei, but demands a favor in return.

An adaptation of Evgenii Zamiatin’s short story “The Cave,” about a musician dying of hunger in his large, unheated Petersburg apartment because he was not needed in the revolutionary city.