Based on a novel by Vsevolod Vishnevsky. January 1917. The workers and peasants of Russia, hunted by the tsarist government in the trenches, forced to defend alien interests of the king, the landowners and exploiters-capitalists. Bolshevik worker Yakov Orel, selflessly performing party mission, said the soldiers the truth about war, about revolution, about what the overthrow of the autocracy does not mean the liberation of the workers from the yoke of landlords and capitalists exploitation. For example, one regiment of the film reflects the events that took place in the whole of the Russian army between February and October 1917.