Stanislav Simonov

A story about Pashka, a really decent, honest guy, even though he lies a lot, who is looking for happiness and love.

Two friends are army officers, and the turbulent times throw them from the Civil War in the early 20s to the Soviet conflict in Finland, from China to the Urals.

Ukraine, 1920. Two White Guards are escaping from Red Army captivity - Vorontsov and Stronsky. They get to the monastery, where a White Guard detachment is hiding under the guise of monks. Vorontsov leads it and waits for a signal to move to the settlements occupied by the Red Army soldiers. He does not suspect that his friend, the “former journalist” Stronsky, is a security officer...

Beginning of WWII. Zinaida, a Russian woman, is taken prisoner by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp together with several other women. She is imprisoned with her baby son, Gena, who is learning to walk and takes his first steps in the snow, in the concentration camp. They spend a few years together in the camp until they are separated, first within Auschwitz itself, then, for good, when the Germans are losing the war and decide to evacuate.

In the years following the end of WWII, test pilots and designers risk their lives to master new jet technologies.

Writer Pavel Snegirev comes to the village where during the war there was an orphanage where he spent his childhood, and meets his old friend Klim Avilov. The collective farm foreman does not understand and does not accept the writer, who did not keep his promised word and did not return after the army, thereby betraying both their friendship and the love of Anichka, who had been waiting for Pavel all this time. Their meeting is the last in their lives.