Ignacy Jan Paderewski returns to Poland. A journalist who is supposed to describe his arrival is called to the editorial office.

The protagonists of the film are two employees of a private television station. Janek is a journalist and Witek is a cameraman. Their specialty is hot, sensational topics. They are just working out the case of a gang, dealing in explosives. One day someone tosses them a tape from which they learn that a well-known politician named Makowski was a UB agent with the alias Ketman in the 1970s.

A Jewish child deported to Kazakhstan is saved and adopted by Kasym, an old Kazakh railway-man. Kasym gives him a Kazakh name, Sabyr, that in Kazakh language means humble. The child grows up in the small Kazakh village along with other deportees Vera, a traitor's wife, and Ezhik a Polish doctor. The Soviet militia harasses the poor peasants and Vera suffered the harassment of a bully cop: Bulgabi. Finally Vera accepts the marriage proposal of Ezhik but the jealous Bulgabi tries to prevent the marriage. The result is a fight in which Ezhik shoots himself accidentally. The old Kasym decides that Sabyr is now old enough to go to seek his real parents. At the end Sabyr, now an adult, decides to return to the village, but the village no longer exists because it was destroyed by a Soviet nuclear test.

Afonia's husband is an ex-boxer, an ex-inmate of a Nazi concentration camp and almost ex-living person as he is paralyzed after an accident. Her daughter is already married. And although Afonia's name is Russian, she is Polish. The only thing both heroines share is love to another strong, handsome and addictive man. A Russian man.