Soviet "proletarian" film about anti-war strike at St Petersburg factory, 1914. Resembles Pudovkin's classic "End of St. Petersburg," made 4 years earlier: backward lad (Poslavsky) from poor village comes to town desperate for work. He's hired as replacement ("scab") worker at big metallurgical factory, which is in the throes of a strike organized by the Bolsheviks (communists). The Bolshevik strikers are led by Ivan Shtraukh (brother of the more famous Russian actor Maxim Shtraukh). At first, the deceitful industrialist's son (Fedosev) involves the naive Poslavsky in an attempt to murder Shtraukh, but the attempt only wounds the heroic organizer. Will Poslavsky follow through with the planned killing, or will he redeem himself by going over to the side of the strikers?

The peaceful life of an exemplary collective farm is being rent asunder by shortages and dissent, and a commissar is sent to uncover the source of the problems, unaware that their is actual sabotage involved.

The story of an effort to catch "wreckers" at work in a Soviet factory. The film’s title-song called "The Song of the Counterplan", composed by Dmitri Shostakovich, became world famous and was adapted into "Au-devant de la vie", a notable song of the French socialist movement of the 1930s.

The comic film "Nalim" is based on the story of Anton Chekhov in 1885. According to the plot, the peasants tried to pull out a huge налим, which was stuck under a snag. The peasants were joined by a local shepherd, a carpenter and a lordly coachman, and then by the master Andrei Andreich himself, who watched this scene for a long time. As a result, the налим hit Andrey Andreyevich with its tail, and the fish left the hapless fishermen.