After being demobilized, Ivan Cheprasov came to work in the motorcade. The chief assigns Ivan an ancient wreck that no one has bothered to repair. 'Colombina'—as the drivers jokingly nicknamed the old car—became a 'touchstone' for Ivan, testing his resilience and skill. Additionally, Colombina serves as a highly humanized metaphor for metal in Ivan's life, continuing the tradition of Soviet social realism by portraying another archetype, in this case, the ideal chauffeur.

Spring of 1944. The war is nearing its end. Thousands of concentration camp inmates were brought to the Normandy coast to repair the defenses damaged by Allied aircraft. On one of the islands, a small group of prisoners, led by Colonel Zakharov, prepares an uprising. The course of events was accelerated by an action taken by French prisoners of war. They barricaded themselves in the bunker and were ready, sacrificing themselves, to undermine the fortress.

A small railway station in the Kuban is captured, but the wounded commissar Sabbutin miraculously manages to escape.

A sailor spends only one day on a shore but during this day he meets a lot of people and even meets a girl who is going to wait for him.

Two stories ("The feat of the soldier Mukhin", "The Last Autumn"). The events of one concern 1917, when Lenin had to hide in Finland, the second takes place in 1923-1924 during the last months of his life in Gorki.

A certain number of French fighter pilots who will not accept the Second Armistice at Compiègne nor Vichy's orders decide to join the USSR. Once they have reached Moscow they resume training and form a squadron they call "Normandie". Reinforced in 1944, the squadron wins many victories. Following the acts of valor displayed by its pilots during the Battle of the Nieman River, it becomes the "Normandie-Niemen" squadron for the rest of times...

Soviet spy Ladeynikov learns that in one of the pharmaceutical centers in a small resort town works a former German war criminal, Dr. Hass, who is finishing the creation of a deadly chemical gas RH development that he began during World War II, experimenting on POWs. Since Ladeynikov doesn't know Dr. Hass's appearance, Soviet intelligence recruits an actor, Ivan Savushkin, who, during the war, escaped from a prison camp where Hass was testing his gas. Together, they must identify and stop him before he finishes and unleashes his weapon of mass destruction.

Danka's and Ksanka's childhood in the village brutally ends when their father is killed by a White Guard officer in front of their eyes. Seeking revenge, they join forces with Valerka, an intellectual from big city, and the gipsy Yashka, but before they can get close to their enemy they have to help their village and the advancing Red Army.