The film tells about Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. October 17, 1896. On the facade of the Alexandrinsky Theater — a poster about the premiere of "The Seagull". A few hours are left before the performance. Chekhov and his sister Masha are expecting Lika Mizinova from Moscow station to arrive from Moscow. Chekhov is alarmed by the upcoming premiere, excited by the meeting with love, which never took place. Memories of acquaintance with Lika, of the experiences caused by the rude scolding of newspaper men who predicted the young writer the inglorious "death under the fence", about the unexpected decision for everyone to go to Sakhalin...
According to the story of the same name by Anatoli Kalinin. The love story of Antonina and the battalion commander Nikitin, whom she sheltered after a severe wound. Antonina Kashirina is wanted to be excluded from the party, accusing the Don Cossack woman living in the territory occupied by the Germans during the war. They don't believe that she hid and treated a wounded Soviet officer. Unable to withstand insulting suspicions, she leaves the party committee bureau. On the way home, Tonya recalls how she picked up a bleeding artillery — the battalion commander Nikitin, she hid him and treated him as she fell in love...
Everything is behind him: fleeing from Nazi-occupied Estonia to Germany, searching for work in foreign cities, and his own crimes.... Everything is realized and decided - it is necessary to return. But when he returned, he found neither home nor relatives. His father's friend, the leader of a gang of nationalists, told him about his difficult past. Joining his gang, the hero decides to take revenge ...
