A former boxing champion returns to his native town and takes to drink, but finds the strength to stop: he marries and gets a job at a factory. During perestroika he joins the democratic movement. The authorities declare him a rapist.

The head of the prison camp is friends with the manager, the head of a criminal gang. An evacuated woman with a child arrives in the city, and the manager falls in love with her.

In a small community in the Ural mountains of Russia in 1953, just after Stalin's death, Barracks begins with the arrival of Olga (Irina Senotova). Olga is alone, her entire family wiped out by a Stalinist purge in Leningrad. She is soon romanced by a militiaman named Alexei, who serves as the community liaison to the government