The film is based on the eponymous book, written by two former street gangsters - Grigori Belykh and Leonid Panteleyev. Film is set in the 1920s St. Petersburg, Russia. Streets of the city are full of the homeless boys. They are caught to be raised and educated at the correction school named after Dostoevsky. The boys are street smart and difficult. But the faculty stands up to the challenge. The teaches are being devoted and caring, and gradually win the respect of the most difficult kids. The school director Vicknixor is a refined intellectual, who becomes a role model for the boys.

The movie is set during the last days of a foreign intervention against Soviet Russia. Police are searching everywhere for a Bolshevik named Brodsky but cannot find him. Meanwhile, a man named Michel Voronov serves as a teacher to a rich woman's son, Zhen'ka.

Based on the plays by A.N. Ostrovsky's tales, staged by the Maly Theater.

Based on the play of the same name by I. Popov and L. Stepanov, staged by the State Academic Maly Theater of the USSR.

The hero saw among his colleagues a man whom he had met during the war in the dungeons of the Gestapo. This man reported that a thief from the same cell was trying to escape. The “thief” was shot, and later it turned out that he was the leader of the underground...

About the district officer Fyodor Ivanovich Aniskin, who maintains order and legality in his native collective farm.

On the edge of a Moldovan village lives a wise old and infinitely lonely Aunt Ruta. She is always eager to help her fellow villagers, to cheer them up, to give them useful advice. It was not easy for her to forgive a long-standing offense, but she finds the strength to forget it and visits her dying relative to ease the last hours of his life.