Alexei Gavrilov is conscripted into the Soviet Armed Forces, and at the recruiting station his fate collides with the stern, persistent discipline of the army. A tense moment with Sergeant Shipov ends with Gavrilov demanding an apology, and the clash sows a bitter seed of resentment in Shipov that will shape the days to come.
As the paperwork rolls through, Shipov engineers a quiet maneuver to have Gavrilov transferred not to the Naval Infantry, but into a motorized infantry regiment where Shipov already holds sway. He fabricates a reason that Gavrilov is a countryman of his, pulling strings so that the conscript’s path veers away from the unit he expected to join. The result is a man stepping away from the corner of prestige and into a harsher, more intimate arena of pressure and control.
The new unit is a battlefield of dedovshchina—a brutal haze of hazing that seeps into every routine and crew. The veterans, old enough to wield influence but young enough to still fear losing their status, impose brutal chores, mockery, and nighttime theft on the new recruits. The atmosphere is thick with fear, and the line between rough school and cruel exploitation remains dangerously thin. Gavrilov refuses to bow to brute force, even as the moment-to-moment pressure builds around him. In this tense space, he forges a bond with a fellow recruit, Ivan Botsu, a friendship that anchors him as the pressure ratchets higher.
A dining-room skirmish becomes a microcosm of the regiment’s struggle for order. Sergeant Stepanov defends Gavrilov and the others, showing a spark of humanity in a system built to grind it down. After the escape from dismissal, trouble intensifies when five unknown assailants assault Stepanov, and Shipov makes it clear that interference will be punished. The crew’s power dynamics begin to tilt, with Shipov’s lurking threat always shadowing the steps of those who resist.
The old guard—referred to by the recruits as the “grandfathers”—enforce their rules with cunning and cruelty. They assign Botsu a grim countdown to demobilization, but Botsu refuses to surrender to the ritual. In retaliation, the grandfathers stage a calculated provocation: Yefreytor Kabanov steals money from one of the skulls and plants it in Botsu’s tunic. The moment of inspection becomes a stage for public humiliation as Shipov demonstrates the supposed discipline by pulling the money from Botsu’s tunic for all to see, turning the room into a chorus of accusation and scorn. The plant is a calculated move to further fracture trust among the recruits and to reaffirm the veterans’ control.
That damage deepens at night: several skulls drag Ivan Botsu into the boiler room, a place of fear and quiet torment. Stepanov witnesses enough to be troubled, but the pressure and fear of Shipov’s reprisals keep him from intervening. In the boiler room, Botsu is brutalized, a brutal display of power that leaves the unit’s moral order even more unsettled. Gavrilov returns to the barracks, unable to locate his friend, and the search that follows leads him straight into the heart of danger. He is himself beaten, a stark reminder of how quickly loyalty can be punished in this environment.
Then Shipov reappears, ordering everyone to disperse, as if the room’s grim tension could be dispersed with a single command. Botsu’s despair pushes him toward a desperate act: a suicide attempt that Gavrilov intercedes to prevent. The moment crystallizes Gavrilov’s realization that life in this unit may demand more than endurance—it may demand courage beyond fear.
With the threat of doom hanging over him, Gavrilov makes a drastic decision and seizes a PK machine gun from the weapons cabinet. An alarm sounds, and the scene erupts into a rush of motion: the entire unit scrambles toward the boiler room. Gavrilov returns with the weapon in hand and uses his moment of leverage to force the “grandfathers” into a display of physical effort—pull-ups—pushing them to the limit and proving that the recruits won’t be broken without a fight. He orders Shipov to do the same, asserting a terrible, raw sense of parity in the heat of crisis.
As the alarm intensifies, the guard arrives, trying to breach the boiler room. In a tense, final moment of restraint and calculation, Gavrilov places the machine gun on the floor and steps toward the exit, signaling a line in the sand. The scene closes not with a clean victory, but with a choice—to walk away from a breaking point and risk the consequences, or to stand and redefine what power looks like in a system built on fear.
What unfolds is a stark portrait of institutional pressure, personal courage, and the unsteady dance between aggression and mercy. The film threads together the experiences of a conscript who refuses to surrender his humanity, a sergeant whose resentment threatens to corrupt every decision, and a group of young men trying to survive a system that tests loyalty, trust, and the meaning of brotherhood. The boiler room sequence serves as a brutal crucible where a tired soldier’s resolve is tested, and where the line between heroism and self-preservation becomes dangerously blurred. The ending lingers on the consequences of revolt within a tightly controlled machine, inviting reflection on how individuals navigate power, fear, and the enduring need for allies in a world that often rewards silence over conscience.
