The movie is set in Moscow from the late 1950s to the late 1970s.
It tells a story about three provincial girls who come to Moscow. They are settled in the same room in a dormitory and eventually become friends. Katerina, strives to earn her degree and also works hard at a factory. At a party she meets a man Rudolf who works as a cameraman for a television channel. He eventually seduces Katerina resulting in her becoming pregnant. Rudolf decides that a marriage is not an option. This leaves Katerina alone with a baby - Rudolf's mother, a member of the Soviet elite, tells her to leave her son alone and offers her money, which Katerina refuses.
The movie shows Katerina with tears in her eyes setting her alarm clock in a dormitory where she just arrived after bearing her daughter, Alexandra, then takes a 20-year leap forward in time. Katerina is then shown waking up to the sound of an alarm clock in her own apartment. She still hasn't married, but she is now the director of a large factory. She has a lover, an older married man named Volodya, but she still feels that something is missing in her life.
One evening when Katerina is returning home from her friend's home in the countryside on a train , she meets a man named Gosha...
The film won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980, and was chosen to participate in the International Film Exchange. The following year, it was awarded the USSR State Prize.
US President Ronald Reagan watched the film several times prior to his meetings with the President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, in order to gain a better understanding of the "Russian soul"