In search for a better life, Anna leaves her Ukrainian village for a big city. Three years later, she finds herself working two jobs and spending most of her days in a rooming house inhabited by broken people.

The young man Nikolos is forced to engage in the fishing of sea sponges in order to get the hand of the beautiful Lenio. This work makes him a cripple, and marriage to his beloved does not bring happiness.

Cheered up by the revolutionary zeal, courage and energy of their leader, Nikolai Alexandrovitch Shchors, in 1919 the peasants and workers' groups gathered in the civil war- devastated Ukraine, to defeat the foreign conquerors and enemies of the revolution. However, it does not take long until a new danger threatens: this time the Polish Pans enter Ukraine, and General Dragomirov marches to Kiev. Shchors, however, gathers the revolutionary forces of the country and brings them to a victorious counter-attack.