It depicts the story of several Russian soldiers during the World War I and the Russian revolution.

In the middle of the 17th century, Ukrainian peasants and Cossacks rose up to fight against the Polish gentry rule. About the events of the National Liberation War in Ukraine under the leadership of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, who with a firm hand led the insurgent masses to an alliance with Russia.

The love story of young Countess Natasha Rostova and Count Pierre Bezukhov is interwoven with the Great Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon's invading army.

In Closterham, Edwin Drood and Rose Button confront his uncle John Jasper, the church choir regent, and Edwin fights Neville Landles, who is in love with Rose, leading to his disappearance.

In 1805 St. Petersburg, Pierre Bezukhov, illegitimate son of a rich nobleman, is introduced to high society. His friend, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, joins the Imperial Russian Army as aide-de-camp of General Mikhail Kutuzov in the War of the Third Coalition against General Napoleon Bonaparte. Part one of the four-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel.

As 1809 nears its end, Natasha attends her first ball, where Andrei falls in love with her with the intent of marriage. However, as her father demands they wait, the prince travels abroad, leaving Natasha in desperate longing. But she meets Anatol Kuragin and forgets Andrei. Part two of the four-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel.

The Soviet motor ship "Albanov", running into a submarine rock, crashes in North sea. Passengers and command on boats head for off-shore rocks and find temporal shelter. Getting a signal about the calamity of motor ship, detachment of divers-rescuers at the head with the chief of party - commissar Petrov - begin works on getting up "Albanov".

About the struggle of a Soviet agronomist to create a drought-resistant variety of wheat. His work is hampered by bureaucracy. When excellent qualities of Albidum, as the developed variety is called, receive wide recognition and authorities decide to export it, external market monopolies do everything possible to prevent the export of Albidum. The film is considered to be partially lost as only one seven-minute fragment is known and found.

The Great Consoler is Lev Kuleshov’s most personal film reflecting both the facts of his life and his thoughts about the place of the artist in contemporary reality. It was the only film in the Soviet cinema of those years that raised the question of what role a creative person played in society.