The setting is the east shore of the Caspian Sea (today's Turkmenistan) where the Red Army soldier Fyodor Sukhov has been fighting the Civil War in Russian Asia for a number of years. After being hospitalised and then demobbed, he sets off home to join his wife, only to be caught up in a desert fight between a Red Army cavalry unit and Basmachi guerrillas. The cavalry unit commander, Rahimov, "convinces" Sukhov to help, temporarily, with the protection of abandoned women of the Basmachi guerrilla leader Abdullah's harem. Leaving a young Red Army soldier, Petrukha, to assist Sukhov with the task, Rahimov and his cavalry unit set out to pursue fleeing Abdullah.Sukhov and women from Abdullah's harem return to a nearby shore town. Soon, looking for a seaway across the border, Abdullah and his gang come to the same town...

The film is based on the eponymous book, written by two former street gangsters - Grigori Belykh and Leonid Panteleyev. Film is set in the 1920s St. Petersburg, Russia. Streets of the city are full of the homeless boys. They are caught to be raised and educated at the correction school named after Dostoevsky. The boys are street smart and difficult. But the faculty stands up to the challenge. The teaches are being devoted and caring, and gradually win the respect of the most difficult kids. The school director Vicknixor is a refined intellectual, who becomes a role model for the boys.

There is a civil war in Central Asia. Bai-rapist kills the whole family of a Turkmen young man, the shepherd Chara Esenov. The surviving Chara, avenging the scolded honor of her young sister, single-handedly pursues Shamurad Khan, the head of the local Basmachi gang. Acquaintance with the Red Army soldier clarifies the meaning of the fight to the hero of the film, he adjoins the Red Guard, opposing the Basmachi, and, giving up personal revenge, once leads Shamurad into a detachment for a legal trial ...

War, 1944. Soldier Zhenya Kolyshkin, a fragile intellectual from Arbat, sets out on New Year's Eve to collect a parcel, but stumbles upon a German dugout. He manages to escape, but guard duty is inevitable. Zhenya's predicament is brightened by Zhenechka, a communications officer in the Katyusha regiment.

The head of the Pervomaiskaya Railway, at the first stage of perestroika, having accidentally learned that they want to fire him from his job, decides to carry out an experiment he had long planned - to put a super-heavy train on the tracks...

About the heroism of Leningrad partisan Larisa Mikhenko during the Great Patriotic War.

Schoolboy Vasya and his little sister Klasha live on the shore of a picturesque lake, in which trout are bred. With the help of their friends, the dogs of the Quiver and the horse Strelka, the guys detain the poachers.