About one of the most difficult weeks after the Civil War in a small Ural city in the spring of 1921, in which the situation was very serious. Famine is on the agenda; if seeds are not delivered to the general sowing, then not only the city, but the entire region will starve. To deliver them by rail, fuel is needed, which is also not available, and twelve miles from the city there is a forest where firewood can be prepared for the trains. In addition to all this, there is an unsolved counter-revolutionary conspiracy in the city...

Psychologists Petrov and Burtseva come from Moscow to a small town at the request of the plant director to find out the reasons for the tense situation at the enterprise and the increasing number of workers' layoffs.