In northward far camp NKVD arrives echelon with the group of prisoners. Among them there are an engineer Sadovskiy and inveterate criminal Kostya, that quickly becomes the ringleader of barrack and forbids to all the appearances at work. The officials of cheka begin a persistent and tactful fight for the change of these people.

About the labor exploits of gold miners, the old partisan Fedor Potanin and his son, the leader Stepan.

Only fragments exist of this early version of Mat [Mother] by Aleksandr Razumnyj.