Vladivostok, 1920. To survive in the whirlwind of the civil war, boys from different worlds, a simple boy Ilya, raised by an officer of the Japanese garrison, and cadet Arkady, the son of a White Guard colonel, pose as brothers. But it is by no means a brotherly feeling that will help them find their way into the 1920s and 1930s, full of hopes, gains and disappointments. First, both will fall in love with Zhenya, the daughter of the red commander, and later, as once, they will find themselves on opposite sides of the barricades: Arkady will make a deal with the Nazis, and Ilya will fight the Germans, even being in a concentration camp…
