In 1904, the Kazakh wrestler Hajja Mukan, inspired by the successes of the Russian hero Ivan Poddubny, the world champion in French wrestling, decided to perform on the big stage.

Near the city of Verny, surrounded by Cossack patrols, the paths of three friends diverge. Instead of his native aul, Nartai finds only ruins. The death of his mother, the disappearance of his fiancée, and the oppression from the stanitsa ataman — all this forces Nartai to join the revolutionary struggle. Hunger and poverty, and pleas for bread greet the blacksmith Azim in his native Zhetysu. A Cossack horse kills Azim’s little son with a kick of its hoof when the boy reaches for scattered grains of bread. Grief turns the blacksmith into the leader of a starving, rebellious crowd. The fate of the third soldier is not easy either. Pavel Zernov, pausing only briefly at the bedside of his dying little son, hastens to rejoin his comrades who have gone underground.

A family of collective farmers arrives in Kazakhstan. The husband, who had persuaded his wife to come in search of an easier life, is frightened by the very first difficulties and goes back home. But the woman stays, because she has fallen in love with a local man. There are no optimistic declarations—only a timid hope that she will take root in this new place, together with the birch trees she planted near the house.

Grisha secretly leaves for the virgin lands without his mother’s permission. The young man quickly adapts to the new hardships and soon, despite his age, becomes one of the leaders of the brigade. Grisha’s mother, Pelageya Maksimovna, arrives at the virgin-land state farm to take her son home, but she ends up staying there and, with motherly love, cooks food for the young pioneers of the virgin lands, who become as dear to her as her own son.

The film tells about the ambulance doctor Galia Ismailova, her worries and joys.