Young Polya comes to Moscow: she wants to find her father, Professor Vikhrov, and try to understand why her mother broke up with him. Vikhrov is a prominent scientist who has defended the forest from barbaric destruction all his life. The war begins. Professor Vikhrov continues to lecture, proving to students the need to protect the forest. Polya is trying to find out the reasons for the long-standing feud between her father and academician Gratsianskiy. Now, when Vikhrov is already not young and lonely, the professor mentally returns to the past.

In a provincial town on the Volga River, the young and sensitive Katerina marries Tikhon, a violent drunkard, and thus enters the crude milieu of greedy salesmen, the "dark kingdom". Her mother-in-law, Kabanikha, rules the family with an iron fist and endlessly harasses Katerina. One day, when Tikhon is away, she meets Boris, a man who embodies everything Katerina is longing for.

Depicts Russian Tsar Peter the First's conquest over the Swedes and his son Aleksey's plot to overthrow him.

This, the first Soviet depiction of Peter the Great, set the stage for what would become the post-Revolutionary line concerning the early Romanovs. Rulers like Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great were widely admired for their dedication to Russia and their absolute determination to enhance her position in the world. But praise for the hated later Romanovs conflicted too heavily with the very beliefs that had brought about the Revolution in 1917.