An idealistic high school graduate goes to work on a state farm on the Kyrgyz steppe, only to clash with its authoritarian leader.

The end of the 1920s — the beginning of the 1930s in Kyrgyzstan. Parts of the Red Army are waging an uncompromising struggle with basmachi in Central Asia. The film tells about the formation of the character of the young Kyrgyz hunter Djura, who found himself in a swirling whirlpool of revolutionary events that swept the Pamirs. It shows the hard way from a simple young hunter, entangled in centuries of prejudice, to a conscious, seasoned in many battles with the Basmachi mature fighter, who believed in the great ideas of the revolution.

Dyuishen is assigned to the mountainous Kirghiz region of Central Asia by the Young Communist League after he is discharged from the Red Army. It is 1923 and the Civil war has ended. The former soldier becomes a teacher, bringing the Leninist doctrine to the remote Moslem area where elders did not allow children to go to school. He falls in love with one of his students, but the young woman is sold by her father to a wealthy chieftain.

The hero of this lyrical and optimistic story, former front-line soldier Shodi Makhmadaliev, has worked as a shepherd for many years. He loves his work. Yet life, surprisingly, is not easy even here in the степь. And when things grow especially heavy on the old soldier’s heart, he turns to the memories of his wartime years and holds on to hope—for something better, something worthy of the memory of his friends who never returned from the front…

The plot is based on events that took place during the severe drought of the early 1970s at the construction of the Toktogul Hydroelectric Power Station. The commissioning of the station's first phase was complicated by the fact that the water needed to start it was also desperately needed by the parched fields. There were many debates (with both personal and professional ambitions involved), and in the end, the problem was solved purely mathematically—rather than by agricultural engineering: salty water from the Kyrgyz Sea was diverted to the fields, while clean mountain river water was directed to the first turbines.