On a stopover in Moscow, a young writer Volodya makes friends with Kolya, who is returning home from a hard night shift. Just as Kolya is about to take a rest, he is met by his old friend Sasha, who wants help getting a deferral from military service so that he can get married.
After WWII, a Soviet pilot returns to civilian life and struggles in her roles as school principal and mother, and with her memories of the war.
The story of a small village Zeleny Dol, lost in the taiga wilderness, became a reflection of the fate of a huge country. A wide panorama of people's life unfolds before the viewer: from the defeat of Kolchak's White gangs to the first tractor furrow on the collective farm meadow, from the first elections to the Supreme Soviet to the send-off of Zelenodol residents to the fronts of the WW2, from the labor feat of women's hands in the rear to Victory Day, to the first post-war bread.
