During the NEP era, the ex-wife of a White officer, now married to a dedicated Soviet worker and lover to several bourgeois “specialists”, is expelled by her husband’s party for her affairs. Meanwhile, the commissar’s wife, once captured by White Cossacks, helps her husband lead a prisoner revolt and later serves as an exchange inspector on the commodity exchange. When she exposes the director’s fraud and her husband is wrongly implicated, both are reassigned to the provinces and depart together. Considered lost.

A small river separates Soviet lands from the territory of one of the capitalist powers. On the other side, the girl Pebble lives with her peasant father. One morning, after running after a cow across a river, the girl crossed to the Soviet side. She only spends one day in the kindergarten of the border post, but this day remains in her memory for the rest of her life. Seeing the bright, spacious rooms, the beautiful clothes of the children, delicious plentiful food, and many toys, the girl remembers with bitterness her dilapidated hut, where there is not always bread for dinner. Caressed by the Soviet people, in a new dress, with a bunch of donated toys, Pebble goes back home. A rude shout from a gendarme officer brings the girl back to bitter reality.

The film is about the struggle against political and cultural backwardness in the remote corners of Ukraine in the mid-1920s. Hysyar, a witch doctor, is the most popular person in the small village of Haniivka.  Gysyar fills his wallet at the expense of gullible and backward villagers, but his "healing" only cripples them with impunity. This brings him into irreconcilable conflict with Marina, a paramedic who has come to the village from the city. To get rid of his unwanted competitor, Hysyar, with the help of the nurse's sister, steals the keys to the cooperative from Marina's fiancé, and plants the stolen goods in Marina's apartment. In despair, Marina commits suicide. An investigative commission that arrives from the city uncovers Hysyar's criminal activities. The witch doctor is put on trial.