1919. Gleb Prokhorov, a worker from St. Petersburg, is sent on a mission by the party to lead a small food supply detachment with a mandate signed by Lenin to a village to get bread for starving Petrograd. But in an unequal battle with the kulaks, the entire food supply detachment is killed, and the wounded Prokhorov passes the mandate on to his thirteen-year-old son, Glebka...