About an old Cossack Gavril, who saved a Red Army soldier and loved him like a son.

Katusha, a country girl, is seduced and abandoned by Prince Nekludov. Nekludov finds himself, years later, on a jury trying the same Katusha for a crime he now realizes his actions drove her to. He follows her to imprisonment in Siberia, intent on redeeming her and himself as well.