The protagonist, a lazy pen-pusher, gets the sack for his bureaucratic idleness, and learns that the way back into the job market depends on getting a letter of recommendation from a "grandmother"

A young country girl who becomes an apple seller is seduced and abandoned. She finds a protector but when he is arrested for theft she finds honest work in a factory.

Loosely based on Aleksandr Kuprin's short story "The White Poodle".

The NEP era. Two families with the same surname, Ivanov, live in Leningrad. They are visited by American relatives, who turn out to be confused. Ivanov the draughtsman's unsuccessful plan to rob the American is replaced by cooperation, as a result of which the American finds a job at Volkhovstroy and decides to stay in the USSR.

Komsomol girl Katya Karnakova, a darling of the small provincial town Old Lopsha, is seriously smitten with a fellow Komsomol and does not even try to hide this from others. After some time as a result of their affair, she becomes pregnant.