Sixth-graders Oleg, Vasya and Vitya go with their pioneer detachment on a hike across the Crimea.

Kirilyuk, the director of the timber processing plant, decides to cut down Oleniy Top, a large forest on the steep slope below which the village is located. Cutting down the massif will enable Kirilyuk to easily fulfill the timber farm's plan and help him regain his fame as the head of an advanced enterprise. But the bare slope can be eroded by rains, and then the village is threatened with a landslide...

The February Revolution did not bring the desired peace to the trenches. Russian and Ukrainian soldiers, deceived by Kerensky's government, are dying on the slopes of the Carpathians. But the words of Bolshevik truth penetrate the trenches, and the soldiers refuse to go to the slaughter. Among the front-line soldiers returning home is a young Ukrainian named Taras Holota. He dreams of joyful reunions, but instead attends the funeral of his mother, who was killed by the Haidamaks. The landless peasantry is starving, and Golota rallies his fellow villagers to divide up the landowners' fields...