An almanac of short feature films based on stories by Mikhail Mishin from the collection of short stories "Pause in a Major".

1921. Three seemingly unrelated terrible events took place in a provincial Siberian town. But Chekist Kamchatov is convinced that there are links between the murders and, moreover, that in the last case, the suicide of a young security guard was, in his opinion, clearly staged...

Fragments of all three short stories retrospectively pass before our eyes. The most difficult thing is not to lose the person who came into your life. Everything can be returned, except the people we lost. Preserving a person is the greatest of arts.

The hero of the film is Vasily Zavyalov, a Siberian, the headmaster of the school in Turgus, where he was born and grew up. We have an army and a pedagogical institute behind us. The rural communists respect him and elect him secretary of the district party committee...