Teaching in Russia, they would have us believe, is a matter of labour inspired, labour creative. There are mediocre teachers, of course, hard­hearted and dead-handed, but they are only the hammers, as it were, against which the everyday teacher of talent must prevail as he bears his sickle through life.

A microcosmic three days in the lives of some members of a school staff are examined through the talented teacher of a class of teenagers, a man with war experience and many years in the classroom behind him, who is lonely, afraid to admit to himself that he has long been in love with a former pupil, now a teacher of English. . . .

Incidentally, the film provides some informative sidelights on Russian teenagers.