About life and customs in the boyar environment during the reign of Peter I.

A group of impoverished Russians living in a shelter near the Volga.

Two fugitives are making their way through the Soviet territory occupied by the Germans. Their goal is to find a partisan unit or cross the front line. One of them is a sixteen-year-old boy, Stepan, a local resident. The other is a Soviet officer who escaped captivity, whom Stepan miraculously saved from death.