The social ferment in late 19th century Russia which led to the 1917 Russian Revolution is movingly portrayed in this lengthy historical drama, which is very faithful to the 1907 novel The Mother by the celebrated Marxist writer Maxim Gorky (1868-1936). In the story, "the mother" (Inna Tchourikova) has no other recourse than to watch her decent, kindly husband turn into an animalistic, drunken brute as a result of working in the inhuman conditions of a steel mill in the town of Sormovo. When he begins to express his suppressed rage by beating her, she is defended by her teenaged son Pavel (depicted Viktor Rakov as an adult, Sacha Chichonok as a boy). After his father's death, Pavel is forced to go to work in the same factory. However, Pavel and his friends begin investigating Marxism and socialist thought, and work to organize their fellow workers.

Diplomat Volodin is going to work in the States for a responsible job. But, having crossed the ocean, he immediately went over to the Americans. And not empty-handed: he calls the American embassy from a pay phone and gives the appearance of a Soviet intelligence officer. The traitor is sure that he will not be identified “by the phone's strangled voice. There can be no such technology. But, on the instructions of the Chekists, such a technique was developed in Marfino's "sharashka" near Moscow by convict engineers and scientists.

In a small provincial town, a famous actress comes on tour, who once fled from here from the shame of unhappy love. Many years ago, she was forced to leave her illegitimate son to raise strangers. Therefore, when a talented and reckless young actor appears on the way of a now rich and famous woman, she certainly wants to help him. The actress begins to take an active part in the fate of the young man.

The story of the last year and a half of Tsar Nicholas II and his family from the February Revolution of 1917 to their execution in July 1918.