Aleksandr Pronin

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. Semyon remains in service. In the post-revolutionary period, Semyon, having been to the front and returning to the village, joined the kulaks, brutally dealt with representatives of the Soviet government, becoming the head of a gang of “badgers” hiding in the forests. A Red Army detachment led by Pavel is sent to fight the bandits...

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 his service ended tragically.

Based on the same name by G. Hauptmann, staged by the State Academic Maly Theater of the USSR. Directed by L. Heifetz.