Two village boys - brothers Semyon and Pavel - serve a Moscow merchant-shopkeeper. They face harsh exploitation and hard forced labor. The brothers' life paths diverge. Unable to withstand the merchant's bullying, Pavel goes to the factory, becomes a worker, and later a professional revolutionary. Semyon remains in service. In the post-revolutionary period, Semyon, having been to the front and returning to the village, joined the kulaks, brutally dealt with representatives of the Soviet government, becoming the head of a gang of “badgers” hiding in the forests. A Red Army detachment led by Pavel is sent to fight the bandits...
Faith Vans, an employee of one of the departments of the US State Department, receives a summons to the commission to investigate un-American activities, and her prosperous, calm life begins to collapse. But Faith doesn't give up, and she fights for her rights.
The imperious old woman Mavra Tarasovna, the mother of the Moscow merchant Amos Panfilovich Baraboshev, is looking for a general groom for her granddaughter Polyxena.