Years of Bolshevik coup. A Soviet plane crashed in one of the sectors of the western front. Before his death, pilot Peluzin managed to reveal the secret of his invention to air observer Andrei. The dying man asked him to finish what he had started — to build an aviation oil engine. After a long search, Andrei managed to find the blueprints, which Peluzin's former flight engineer, Bogdan, was also hunting for...

Negina, a talented actress at a provincial theater, must leave the stage because her purity of behavior is incompatible with theatrical customs. She loves the student Meluzov, and both dream of an honest, hard-working life. Harsh reality destroys her plans. A natural actress, Negina is unable to leave the theater, and in order to serve art, she is forced to betray her ideals and sell herself. After agonizing doubts, the actress becomes the mistress of the wealthy landowner Velikatov and leaves with him. Meluzov, left alone, angrily denounces the depraved "admirers of talent," the masters of the city.

The local doctor Yelizaveta Maksimovna is a beautiful woman and a wonderful sympathetic person. She is lonely, although she is cared for by a confident and promising colleague. Yelizaveta Maksimovna has one patient, a manly, full-energy ship builder Yershov, chained to the bed with a paralysis of both legs. All doctors recommend him rest, and Elizaveta Maksimovna advises to work and not feel sorry for herself. Yershov with all his heart falls in love with his doctor, and she loves him, but she does not dare to say her feelings. Ershov thinks that he has no hopes, but...

The Greek teacher Belikov, who works in a rural gymnasium, loved to keep things in cases, was afraid of everything and lived himself, as if in a case, on the principle: “no matter what happens”. By this principle, he literally "terrorized" the gymnasium and the villagers. Hope appeared when Varenka arrived in the village - “not a girl, but marmalade”, although she was already aged, and “did not mind being married, even if only to a teacher of the Greek language”.