Ivan Vasilyevich is in love with Varenka and is admired by her father, Colonel. But the transformation of a tender loving father from a good-natured colonel into a cruel and ruthless tormentor shocked Ivan so much that his feelings for Varenka quickly cooled.
Two village boys - brothers Semyon and Pavel - serve a Moscow merchant-shopkeeper. They face harsh exploitation and hard forced labor. The brothers' life paths diverge. Unable to withstand the merchant's bullying, Pavel goes to the factory, becomes a worker, and later a professional revolutionary....
A former front-line soldier, who worked at his post for a quarter of a century, local commissioner Lieutenant Semyon Mitrofanovich Kovalev, going to the department in the morning, was most sad that tomorrow he would no longer have to go to service: tomorrow he would be retired. But the last day of...