One day, doctors Speransky and Nikulin made an outstanding scientific discovery: they discovered the bacillus of indifference and ignorance. To describe its action, one of them selflessly instills it in himself.

Woven around the daily lives of two children, nine-year-old Nastenka and five-year-old Katia, this is a story of the 17 months' siege of Leningrad and of the people and families shattered by the war, their homes bombed and destroyed, their lives in a constant anticipation of the advancing German army and air raids.

塔基亚娜（Nina Ivanova 饰）是一位非常美丽的姑娘，大学毕业之后，她决定前往工人夜校教授文学课。怀着满腔教育抱负的塔基亚娜没有想到的是，在夜校里，那些工人们根本就不把文学课当做是一回事，学习态度非常的消极和散漫，这让塔基亚娜非常的受打击。然而，随着时间的推移，塔基亚娜渐渐的在这些工人们的身上看到了吃苦耐劳的一面，对他们的看法有了大大的改观。 工人萨沙（尼古拉·雷布尼科夫 Nikolai Rybnikov 饰）爱上了塔基亚娜，可是塔基亚娜拒绝了他，这让萨沙陷入了抑郁的情绪中，破罐子破摔。之后，塔基亚娜在一次偶然的机会下发现了萨沙不为人知的一面