Zina is sixteen. She is a manipulative schoolgirl living in a small Russian town among sincere and simple people. Zina is nice on the surface, but so unable to enjoy normal life, that she is desperately trying to hurt someone. She tries to seduce and compromise a handsome young man, but he is smart enough to see through her and escapes from her trap. Zina manipulates her classmates so she looks like a victim. Now Zina's teacher, Vera, a sweet and loving lady, takes care of her trying to save the troubled girl, but in return, Zina becomes extremely crafty to hurt the teacher.

Osoaviahimovets (volounteer military trainee) Andron organizes an aviation circle on his Volna collective farm and plans to build a parachute tower. Pilot Oreshkin, in love with Varenka, the daughter of the collective farm chairman, who is categorically opposed to aviation in the village, promises the guys to bring a parachute soon. And no matter how cunning the chairman is, young people still manage to convince him.

As an adviser to the emperor Nicholas II, mystic Grigori Rasputin holds great influence over the empire. However, many in St Petersburg begin to regard Rasputin, with his strange practices and mesmerizing qualities, as a liability and plot his assassination. When Rasputin, known to many as the 'Mad Monk', leads Nicholas to embrace an ill-conceived military strategy, a group of determined conspirators set down a plan to eliminate him.

A Mongolian expedition led by Professor Jambon and a group of Soviet explorers travel through the desert to the Alamas Mountains, where large oil deposits are believed to be located. Among the members of the expedition there is a saboteur, on whose tip the expedition is attacked...

Bezhin Lug (Bezhin Meadow) was to be a Soviet film about a young farm boy whose father attempts to betray the government for political reasons by sabotaging the year's harvest, and the son's efforts to stop his own father to protect the Soviet state, culminating in the boy's murder and a social uprising. Assigned to Soviet film-maker Sergei Eisenstein, the filming followed the same path as with his previous effort, "Que Viva Mexico", into cost overrun and over-shooting of footage. Furthermore, Eisenstein's usage of forbidden experimental film techniques outraged his government superiors, who ordered the film destroyed before it was even completed. All that survives are the first and last frames of each shot, preserved by Sergei Eisenstein’s wife, Pera Atasheva. The 1967 reconstruction, by Naum Kleiman of the Eisenstein Museum and Sergei Yutkevich of Gosfilmofond, places these frames in order, approximating the original film.

The class teacher invited fathers about whom the children wrote essays to a parent meeting. This is how everyone found out what their son or daughter thought about him. This gave rise to an interesting and serious conversation.

A young Nenets hunter exposes a saboteur who has infiltrated the territory of the USSR, who at first poses as a doctor who has gone astray, and then makes the hunter his hostage.

Soviet agent Fedotov is air-dropped into Nazi occupied land. He changes over into Mr. Ekhert, a German entrepreneur wishing to take advantage of eastern worker slave labor in occupied Ukraine. Ekhert (Fedotov) enters into a partnership with a German entrepreneur who's son, Willie, is a high ranking Nazi. Together they go to Vinnitsa, Ukraine and start a factory. Fedotov begins seeking contacts with headquarters, but faces problems when a Ukrainian Nazi collaborator manages to infiltrate the Soviet partisans.

At one court hearing, a witness, who is engaged in prostitution, refused to take the oath, cause she didn't consider herself as a Christian. That incident caused great excitement in the hall.

The rich merchant widow Yuliya Tugina is practically ruined by her lover, impoverished nobleman Vadim Dulchin, who loves only himself and gambling. Merchant Flor Fedulych in love with a young widow Yuliya Pavlovna. But all her thoughts are occupied by the handsome Dulchin. But the wise and prudent merchant builds his intrigue, and soon they will have to combine marriage with the unloved, but the rich.