Based on the work of Yurii Mushketyk "Yasa". The action of the picture takes place in the 17th century, when Ukraine, led by the legendary Ivan Sirko, was defending itself from Tatar raids. A story of Ivan Sirko, the legendary Ukrainian originally from the Merefa county near Kharkiv, who was elected the leader of Cossacks eight times, bravely fought and won 53 major battles.

Young journalist Andrei Petrushov, who devoted a lot of time to searching for the missing manuscript of the writer Pustyrev, who was repressed in 1937, temporarily gets a job teaching Russian language and literature at school...