The end of the 1920s. The capitalist world is in crisis. The fascists unleash war against the Soviet Union. The enemy attack interrupts the peaceful labor of Soviet people. Hundreds of production workers join the Red Army. At the front go Red Army units, columns of tanks, units of the people's militia. Enemy airplanes appear over the Soviet city, black bomb bursts are rising. The streets are moving mournful funeral processions of the first victims of the war. At the end of the movie, a worker appears on the screen, appealing to the audience to be ready for the war, which has not yet come, but will come “maybe tomorrow"

The film recreates the events of 1905. In the center of the picture is the struggle of the proletariat, led by the Bolshevik party, against tsarism. The demonstration of labor unrest is replaced by episodes of the Russo-Japanese war, Black-Hundred demonstrations, accompanied by a pogrom of Jews, and beating of the intelligentsia. The film paints the attitude of the Mensheviks towards armed insurrection, reproduces the picture of barricade battles, the arrest of the Council of Workers' Deputies and the brutal reprisals of the tsarist autocracy with revolutionaries.

At the school where worker Nikolai Zhikharev studied, students were given a lot of theoretical information, but how to work with machinery was not explained. Therefore, on one of the first working days at the plant Zhikharev made a serious mistake - he let steam out of the boiler. He was transferred to the clerk's office, but even there difficulties awaited the hero. However, Zhikharev did not give up. He decided to change the educational process in schools so that trained and prepared workers would come to the factories.

An ideologically committed Red Army soldier returns home from the war and takes up a new struggle with the aim of collectivizing the land of a wealthy peasant.

The “Transbalt“ vessel is to deliver a cargo of salt to Far Eastern fishermen who have made increased commitments. The crew makes a counter-commitment to provide the fishermen with salt ahead of schedule. But on the way to Vladivostok, one of the ship's boilers explodes. A storm begins. Overcoming incredible difficulties, the crew completes the task.