The career path of Sergei Omarov, a young engineer and graduate of a mining institute, does not start easily. But with the help of his worker friends, he not only becomes a skilled craftsman, but also rises to the position of head of Vzryvprom.

Having lived for his pleasure most of his life, floor polisher Ivan Karetnikov, on the threshold of his 60th birthday, did not for the first time leave his next wife himself, but she abandoned him, moreover, in public. In addition to these troubles, he was fired from his job, replaced by a mechanical polisher. In this difficult moment, Karetnikov remembered the first wife, and then the second and third. But turning to each of them, he seems to begin to lose hope of seeing compassion for himself.

The plot is based on the defense of Petrograd from Yudenich's troops in 1919.