The 1890s. One of the cities on the Volga River. The young wife of a merchant falls in love with Artem, a “Volga bogatyr,” a man of enormous strength and violent temper. She dreams of leaving with him for the countryside. Her jealous husband bribes hooligans to kill Artem.

The film shows one of the heroes of the uprising of the Belarusian, Lithuanian and Polish people against forced Russification and the restoration of Poland's independence in 1863.

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.

Leonid Pleshcheyev returned from the war blind. Against his will, he became a dependent. He drowns his grief in unrestrained drunkenness, thereby tormenting his wife Mariya and his teenage son Lyonka. Mariya finally decides to take her son and leave for Altai, but the boy runs away and returns to his father. So, together, they eke out a half-miserable existence until Grigoriy Shalagin, Pleshcheyev's longtime friend, returns from the army. It is he who awakens in Leonid the extinct self-esteem and pride of a soldier. Pity aside, he helps him get back to work.