The protagonist, a lazy pen-pusher, gets the sack for his bureaucratic idleness, and learns that the way back into the job market depends on getting a letter of recommendation from a "grandmother"
A young country girl who becomes an apple seller is seduced and abandoned. She finds a protector but when he is arrested for theft she finds honest work in a factory.
Komsomol girl Katya Karnakova (Veronica Buzhinskaya), a darling of the small provincial town Old Lopsha, is seriously smitten with a fellow Komsomol Andrei (Valery Solovtsov) and does not even try to hide this from others. After some time as a result of their affair, she becomes pregnant.
