About the early years of the life of the philosopher and writer Alexander Herzen, about his first and unrequited love, about the throwing of youth and growing up of a young critic and revolutioner. According to his father, he comes from an ancient Russian family, and his mother was a simple German woman. As an illegitimate son, he was not given the name of his father, Yakovlev. In his youth, he was fond of the ideas of freedom, for which it is not a pity to fight, which even then was close to the ideals of the revolution...

An agent working for the Tsar fools a group of Bolchevik sailors but is captured and punished after the revolution.