Yuri Arkhiptsev

The first story takes place in February 1945 in Budapest. In the basement of one of the houses, a platoon commander named Kapustin — a former circus performer — meets a Hungarian actor who doesn't speak Russian. Yet they quickly find a common language. The clown Karandash appears in the story. The second story is about a grandmother who didn’t like the circus, but went there for the sake of her grandson…

A Moscow group of Komsomol members arrives on the virgin lands, in the Kazakh steppes, and immediately faces bureaucracy and carelessness. Someone flees the state farm for more reliable earnings, and someone simply does not want to work. But a new energetic director appears — and real life begins...

The adopted daughter of Dr. Skvortsov, Tanya, having learned that her mother Natalya Avdeyevna is alive, who was considered dead during the bombing of World War II, decides to go to her in a distant village on vacation. She recognizes the woman who gave her life and lost her husband and sons due to the war, but cannot call her mother. Meetings on the collective farm with interesting people make Tanya think a lot and experience a lot. She discovers for herself a completely new, largely alien world to her. It does not immediately penetrate the sense of inner kinship with this world, its people, so unusual for her.

After coming into conflict with the administration of his research institute, engineer Krylov files his resignation and starts working as a stuntman.