An unexpected romance occurs for a female Red Army sniper and a White Army officer.

Dyuishen is assigned to the mountainous Kirghiz region of Central Asia by the Young Communist League after he is discharged from the Red Army. It is 1923 and the Civil war has ended. The former soldier becomes a teacher, bringing the Leninist doctrine to the remote Moslem area where elders did not allow children to go to school. He falls in love with one of his students, but the young woman is sold by her father to a wealthy chieftain.

In Dzhezkazgan, to work in the mines, come Sapar and Sharip, just that graduated from school, but did not enter the institute. Sapar - a hot, enthusiastic and responsive young man, and Sharip - a style and cynic. About how their further fate, about how both of them found their place in life and became good miners, and tells the film.

About the secretary of the district committee of the party, Sabyr Bayanov, who at the beginning of his work deservedly won the authority and respect of people, and then, having become arrogant, he lost his sense of responsibility and turned into a bureaucrat.

The train goes to Moscow. In the same carriage with the railway workers who are going to the meeting, there is a Chinese writer collecting material for his future novel about the people of Soviet Kazakhstan. He discovers an old newspaper in his archive. The newspaper contains photos of the best drummers — builders of Turksib: Ospan, Hakim, Boris, Hadisha and others. They turn out to be the writer's neighbors on the car — yesterday's ordinary workers, builders, now the most prominent statesmen, heads of railways. At the request of the writer, Ospan tells a touching story of their life and love.

The action takes place on the southern outskirts of the country in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. The film tells about the struggle of the Bolsheviks and Kyrgyz peasants against the rich Bais and Basmachi for a better, just life.