Yevgeniya Lyzhina

Veronika and Boris come together in Moscow shortly before World War II. Walking along the river, they watch cranes fly overhead, and promise to rendezvous before Boris leaves to fight. Boris misses the meeting and is off to the front lines, while Veronika waits patiently, sending letters faithfully. After her house is bombed, Veronika moves in with Boris' family, into the company of a cousin with his own intentions.

It is the New Year's Eve and the employees of an Economics Institute are ready with their annual New Year's entertainment program. It includes a lot of dancing and singing, jazz band performance and even magic tricks. Suddenly, an announcement is made that a new director has been elected and that he is arriving shortly. Comrade Ogurtsov arrives in time to review and disapprove of the scheduled entertainment. To him, holiday fun has a different meaning. He imagines speakers reading annual reports to show the Institute's progress over the year, and, perhaps, a bit of serious music, something from the Classics, played by the Veterans' Orchestra. Obviously, no one wants to change the program a few hours before the show, much less to replace it with something so boring! Now everyone has to team up in order to prevent Ogurtsov from getting to the stage. As some of them trap Ogurtsov one way or another, others perform their scheduled pieces and celebrate New Year's Eve.

1944 Sergeant Vasily Kalina returns to his native village of Pastoron after the hospital. But he does not find the village: retreating, the Germans burned all the houses and mined the fields. The restoration of the economy is led by the former commander of the partisan detachment Grigory Gorovoy. He appoints Vasily as the chairman of the collective farm. Soon Kalina learns that Claudia, whom he loved before the war, considering him dead, married Gorovoy. The current situation is not an easy test for all three...

Like many boys and girls whose early years included the Great Patriotic War, 16-year-old Dusya was eager to go to the front. She and her family lived not far from Sukhumi, and not a week passed without Dusya stopping by the local military registration and enlistment office. Each time the military commissar refused to grant her request, but Dusya did not give up and one day she was offered to enter an intelligence school.