A young teacher goes to a school for adults. He is younger than many of his students and some of them are starting to miss school.
Serebryakov, a retired professor and his beautiful, much younger second wife, Yeléna, visit their country estate, which funds their urban lifestyle. Vanya, brother of the Professor's first wife, who manages the farm estate, and the local Doctor Astrov, both fall under Yelena's spell, while complaining of the endless ennui of their provincial existence. Astrov is an experienced physician who performs his job conscientiously, but has lost all idealism and spends much of his time drinking. Sofya, the Professor's daughter by his first wife, who works to keep the estate going with her uncle Vanya, meanwhile suffers from lack of esteem over what she sees as her own lack of beauty, and from an unrequited love for Dr. Astrov. Matters are brought to a head when the Professor announces his intention to sell the estate, Vanya and Sofya's home, to achieve a higher income for himself and his wife.
Based on the story of Boris Mozhayev “The Power of the Taiga”. In the taiga village, where everyone is in sight, almost unbelievable happens — a local store is robbed. One of the rafters of the forest is recognized as a hacker. But some “inconsistencies” haunt the young precinct Vasily Seryozhkin. And in the end, he goes on the trail of the true participants in the crime...
Moscow academician Pavel Pavlovich comes to a picturesque village on the seashore to calmly spend his vacation here. Whiling away the time for sketches, he manages to get acquainted with the local guys, the restless Grishka and the daughter of the foreman Nyuska. Together they build a stove, repair a sewing machine, and reconstruct a telephone switchboard. When Pavel Pavlovich suddenly falls ill, all the villagers take care of him. When the time comes to leave, Pavel Pavlovich understands that in this village far from the capital, he leaves a piece of his heart.
The story of a man who routinely dodges all responsibility, bemoans fate, spends his days boozing, and refuses to work. The act of playing long-lost father to a pretty teenager spurs him to turn over a new leaf.
White troops are approaching the village. A small garrison of Red Army soldiers decides to evacuate civilians and a wounded soldier to safety. This important task is entrusted to the young Komsomol member Efimka. The carts leave the village and travel along forest roads, but lose their way. At night, at a rest stop, Efimka, his mother and Verka talk about the future, about a forty-story house with a tower, a star and a spotlight - let it shine!..
Tractor driver Matvey Morozov returns to his native village from the prison. And he recalls the story of his marriage, his fatal love, failed betrayal and committed reckless “crime”, in which he doesn't repent at all.
1935. Two families — Davydov's with three children and the newlyweds Lida and Dmitri Kashirin's — enter the new house on the outskirts of Moscow into a common communal apartment. The children grow up, and they and the adults around them are looking for their place in life, looking for answers to the questions of who to be and what to be, quarreling, making peace, building relationships, destroying them. Six years later, the peaceful lives of characters, with their joys and misfortunes, quarrels and reconciliations, and complex personal relationships, are blown up by a war that connects everyone at once, forcing them to see the meaning of their days, their attitudes to each other and their life values in a different way. For some of them, war is a fatal trait.